A New God Icon

Shortly after getting here on the farm in the early days of retirement, I sensed that something new and different was opening up in terms of my understanding of matters of faith.  To be honest is to admit that what I believed and how I expressed those beliefs was poured with such a thickness of concrete that only God might imagine that it could shift into something new.  But, without much fanfare and without any  lights such as must have filled the Damascus Road on the life changing day of Paul, things started happening.    One of the earliest moments of awareness came when I was trying to hunt turkey.  Actually, there is little hunting to turkey hunting, it is more about sitting, calling, waiting, and watching.   

On the day being remembered I was so intent on trying to make the perfect turkey call that I did not know an owl had settled on a limb just behind and above me.  How long he watched I do not know, but I do know at some moment he must have decided enough was enough and he called out as only an owl can do which sent me falling off my bucket seat as I tried to rein in a runaway heart beat.     

I had other encounters with this old owl.  One day I tried sneaking up on him.  Another day I just sat and watched.  And at night as I lay in bed I would follow his hooting sounds as he moved about the farm.  Before I could comprehend it, the owl became my new icon for the holy.  Present but not seen; yet, prone to revelation.  Always aware of my presence even when I was thought otherwise.  And, even in the night I went to sleep knowing he was out there in the dark, or maybe I should say, I went to sleep knowing He was out there in the dark.