I felt a gentle nudge this morning. Turn around. I didn’t want to listen. I don’t really like to turn around and go back the same way I came. It seems like it nullifies the journey I have been on. “I’ve already been there,” I whine internally.
I sensed it again.
Reverse course.
So ... I went and sat on a rock. I know, I know. That really doesn’t count as reversing course, but... baby steps, right? I knew I would reverse course. Eventually. I just had to come to terms with it first. So I sat, and watched. Talked to people passing by. Listened to the birds, watched for deer and rabbits. Ate my applesauce. Wrote a few blogs.
After I had done everything I could think of to procrastinate, I got up and started the slow trudge back the same way I had come. The internal whiner in me was grumbling, as expected.
But then I looked up.
What I saw was breathtaking. I was staring straight at the Waldo Canyon burn scar, high enough to seem eye level with it. For years, it’s just been a brown, burned hill. With nothing on it except for charred trees and scorched land.
Isaiah 61 settled over me.
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon mebecause the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor; He has sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lordand the day of vengeance of our God;to comfort all who mourn, to preserve those who mourn in Zion, to give to them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praisefor the spirit of heaviness, that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He might be glorified.
Truly, as I stared in wonder at the beauty emerging from the scar, I felt the Spirit of the Lord upon me. Not in a burning bush or pillar of cloud kind of way.... more like a “notice the wonder all around you and what I can bring from ashes” kind of way.
If He is bringing life and beauty from that huge scar of death on the hill, perhaps He can...will...is doing a similar work in me, with my own burn scars. And in you. In all of His people. We are after all, the children of God. The pinnacle of creation. The only part of all that exists that has been given his breath and his heartbeat. And while there is beauty and wonder in the way He is restoring the hillside, it is only a whisper of the glory that can be found within God’s children. You. Me.