In the Dog Fennels

When I was racing toward ten years old, we live out on the edge of Waycross, Georgia in an area of town known as Hebardville.  It was a neighborhood and our street was one of those places that had not yet reached wall to wall house status.   Next to our house was a large corner field filled with dog fennels that soared high over a ten year old boy's head.  I beat down trails and made round clearings big enough to be my own personal hiding places.  I remember laying out in those clearings surrounded by towering dog fennels watching the white puffy clouds drift by on summer days.  I was sure if I looked long enough I was going to see God who I was convinced lived up there and might be caught peering down at me over the edge of one of those clouds.

 

While I never did see God riding across the blue sky on one of those big white clouds, I suppose I could say it was the beginning of a lifetime of being on the lookout for Him.  The truth is we never know when He is going to show up.  Sometimes it is in the midst of the most ordinary moments of our life.  Sometimes His coming is so extraordinary that it gets framed in our memory as one of those mountain top experiences.  And, surprisingly enough, we have also learned after a life time of struggles that He most surely can be seen and experienced in those dark moments when everything seems to be turned upside down. 

 

These days of Advent tell us to keep our eyes open.  We are to watch.  We are to be ready.  We are to experience what it is to live with expectancy.  God is always on the prowl.  He is more constant and faithful than anything or anyone in our life, but He can also be very unpredictable.  Advent reminds us to be doing what we should be doing every single day of our life.  Every single day of our life we should be living as if God is going to be meeting us in the next moment.  When we live with such expectancy, no moment is mundane and every moment is filled with the holy.  "Father, I want to be one who has eyes to see and who sees...so bless me.  Amen."