Sunday, January 6, 2013

The Calling Light

Light.

Warmth soaked its way through me as I sat with my back to wall, sitting on a mat outside watching the caregivers embroider new shirts. There are many things that trigger the senses with memories such as taste, smell; but today I experienced it in light.

Sauntering with little brown hands in mine across campus with a full tummy from breakfast, I walked to the place where five ladies sat embroidering on a mat. Stopping to watch I sat down on the mat to learn from their handiwork. As my observing turned into first thirty minutes then one hour, my gaze drifted to the wall where two of the ladies sat with their backs to it, stitching. Studying the light cast on the wall as it played with the overhead branches of the shade tree, my mind was catapulted to places and seasons of home.

The angle of the sun lit up the wall and the ladies embroidering with the same color that shines during the morning in Northern California's wintertime. Memories of family vacations and Christmas' spent in the Sunshine State flooded my mind. I've come to the conclusion: it's okay to be homesick once in awhile. In fact it is necessary.

Sitting there in the sunlight, I was amazed and in awe of how the angle of such light could trigger my memory in such a profound way! Is that what happens when His light is on me? My desire for places I've never known is heightened? Made in the the image of Creator (of dust no less), designed for another place with grace etched into our soul like the scars on His wrists. Who is such a Being who makes us out of dirt with a heart beating out the rhythm of another culture?

What happens when we encounter His presence in another face, words scrawled across loose pages, or with our face to the ground? Something calls deep within us when Light falls upon us and our hearts scream with elation and desire; praise. It is good. It is okay to be homesick when it instills within us a desire for something more, Someone Greater.

"When I can no more stir my soul to move,
And life is but the ashes of a fire;
When I can but remember that my heart
Once used to live and love, long and aspire-
Oh, be thou then the first, the one thou art;
Be thou the calling, before all answering love;
And in me wake hope, fear, boundless desire."


-George MacDonald

No comments:

Post a Comment