Wednesday, June 28, 2006

A Blue Sky

I came to the sad realization the other day that I hadn't see a blue sky in a really long time. In fact, I noted to my father

recently that the sky over Dayton seemed to be a hazy gray whenever I looked up these days. With the town being sandwiched between the mountains and the Tennessee River, I assumed that High Humidity and Summertime Heat must have formed a formidable alliance against the tagteam of White Puffy Clouds and Deep Blue.

The notion was a depressing one, being that I remembered days when I was a child where the sky seemed so blue that I could possibly go swimming in it. Our family didn't have a house with central air conditioning until I was at least 12 years old, and since there was nothing tempting me to stay indoors I spent most of my summer days galavanting (such a great action verb, too bad I can't honestly use it to describe myself more often) in the abundance of the great outdoors and under what seemed like a never-ending blue blanket. At times the memories are triggered by a smell or a taste and come flooding back: the smell of kudzu by the creek early in the morning, the treat of playing with the waterhose with my siblings, running around in a downpour from the first rainfall in weeks, squinting to play catch into the last moments of light in the evening.

But then too many things got in the way. School, relationships, career, bills and other distractions, and now it's a lot harder to find a blue sky anymore. Actually, I've often wondered if a true blue sky does in fact still exist. Thankfully, I was reminded today that they do.

As I was walking out of the office this afternoon I was persuaded by a group of wildflowers to stop and take their portrait near the parking lot. Squatting to try and get an upward angle of my subject, I was confronted by the one of the bluest skies I've seen in quite some time floating in the background (to the right). One might say it was my lucky day, but it occurred to me that the sky probably wasn't making a special appearance for me, I was just willing to look up. I've often been told that I stare at the ground and things below too much, and here I was focusing again on what was easiest and closest to me. It wasn't a special appearance, it was a change in my perspective that allowed me to see what was staring down at me and that's changed my attitude and belief in blue skies.

This ramble is therapeutic for me, but it's more than that. I've several friends from both my childhood and college years, friends who were growing Christians, that are currently in the midst of crises of faith and have been heavy on my heart lately. It seems that the joy they once had in life, reaped from burgeoning spiritual growth, has been replaced by cynicism and mistrust, doubting and questioning spirits. Life gets complicated; I understand. We grow up and have more responsibilities, more worries and concerns. We learn more about ourselves and the world around us and the paradoxes and seeming contradictions therein, for every answer we find we often times find two more questions, we have hurts, but does that really mean that God isn't good? Is he not allowed to be mysterious in His workings and ways? And isn't faith believing the mysteries? How can faith work in us if we demand signs and wonders and a picture perfect logical step-by-step manual for how it works? Isn't that the antithesis of faith?

To those friends who are struggling, whether you've let it be known or not, I pray that the Lord would sneak up on you, change your perspective and show you Himself. That he would move your focus from the things that are below and lift it to the things that are above, that He would reawaken your wonder to the world around, His goodness and His love for you and show you an amazing blue sky.