It’s a familiar path, this is home. I feel my body
relax as soon as my feet hit these salt-stained, splintering boards.
They lead me out into the water, closer to the deep. I know these waters; I’ve
splashed in her brackish shallows on sunny days of seasons past. I’ve watched
her rise, angrily battering these same weathered boards, leaving them warped
and twisted, but better for it. Tonight, in the quiet stillness, she reflects
the sinking sun, the daytime sky’s final dramatic act before the nighttime
curtain call. She doubles the beauty that dances above and everything seems
multiplied.
“Show me your glory!” Moses cried out to Creator God. A
humble man’s bold request in a moment of passion. My plea echoes the same. Just a
girl standing on the edge of the earth, peering up at the almost-night sky,
“Show me, God. Teach me your ways, show me your glory.”
“I am loving and I am compassionate and I will show you. But
there are things far too wonderful for you to see.”
So God placed Moses in the cleft of a rock, high enough and
close enough to see his goodness, but hidden and protected and from the
things too wonderful. The mighty hand that lovingly reached down to cover him on that hill is the same hand that curled around a mama’s finger in a stable somewhere in
Bethlehem. And when those same hands grew strong and calloused, they climbed a different hill to do the
only thing that would truly accomplish what they had set out to do since the
beginning of time when they gathered dirt in a garden: to make us close to him.
That is the hope and the heart of this season, and the joy of this promise is what sustains us throughout the year. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Not to be close to us, but so we could be close to him. That is reconciliation, that is forgiveness, that is hope.
I pause to take it all in, living in the cleft of this
mountain is daunting and thrilling and scary, but the view is impossible to
beat. When I’m overwhelmed by the wonder of it all, I can’t help but smile at
the glorious unseen. The things too wonderful…
Someday.
For further reading:
Exodus 33:12-23
Ephesians 2:13
Romans 5:8
