I Am

God, are you here?

If I accept the steady information flow, darkness is all I see. The world is in great pain.
We’re in over our heads; light spreads at too slow a pace for one step, it seems.
We’re waiting; are you here?

Death wreaks havoc.
Surely it’s dead. My purple shamrock is a lost cause.
A wise angel with a green thumb gifted it to me. She’s a hair gal and among the finest at her craft, but people would pay to sit in her chair even if she weren’t. A treasure chest of a personality who once dressed up as Miss Chiquita to send our kids on a mission trip. Her alter-ego squeals, ululates, “Aye-yie-yie!” Beneath the peel she gives nature away for life.

Creatures abound.
In spring’s moment, God reveals. When life slows pace unexpectedly and we recover from the whiplash, we can watch buds burst on crackly, brown branches. What appears dead, sings the chorus of resurrection once more. We notice because within, the same is taking place. Nature notices nature. A dove covey stops their pecking rhythm to hold high heads in salute to the not-so-alluring possum ambling over from across the street. We join in watching. Collectively this year, we wait as spring’s days amble by. Budding recalls hummingbirds and we hang the feeders wondering, “Are you there?” The first representative, the sentry of hummer-host, announces his presence in a full face, eye-level, 30-second connection. I am here.

I AM.
This sounds familiar. Take off your sandals of self-sufficiency. Loosen your can-do Chacos. I am (Exod. 3:4-5).

As I confessed my shamrock slaughter, Chiquita shared how these botanical beauties need to rest their purple heads. They get tired and retreat into their diminutive bulbs, becoming invisible. We introverts must confess our envy here; this sounds nice. The prescription is a break, a blanket, a little darkness of all things. Wisdom gifted a plant who would need a break and a blanket. She’s a really good friend who lives the rhetoric of nature.

Spent. The shamrocks, ourselves, all of us spent in evidence of the jarring and paradoxical time in which we are living. It’s dark! But it’s also abundant, a seeming catch-22. We find ourselves turning one way and then another, dealing with issues within that find voice in the quiet. Leave it to nature, God’s creation to indwell this tension. We witness once more the divine habit of exploding boxes, breaking down the barriers surrounding kenosis.

In the days following their nurture, the shamrocks began to stretch their necks out of the earth afresh, springing multiple charms and propagating flowers. Turning toward nurture during crisis times, we “recognize the artisan while paying heed to his works” (Wis. 1:1). Restoration indwells kindness, turning our hearts and minds back to the Lord as the floral neck turns toward the light (Rom. 2:4).

The heaviness of our grief-questions can strip us down to the studs or call our minds back to first things. We were made God-purposed people, in the beginning, to tend. In this nurture, the tending, we find the crux of our joy and the world’s pain. In the garden, God called to his first companions, “Where are you?” (Gen. 3:8). The joint is celestial fellowship, acceptance of theodicy.

Where can I flee from your presence?
Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light around me become night,
even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day,
for darkness is as light to you. (Ps. 139: 7, 11-12)

Are you here?
The foot of the cross, the very groan of the Spirit beckons man, woman, “Are you here?” Of the many places we aspire to be right now, the many calendar items removed, the base of the cross is the one place to which we are called. Here we unburden, grab a blanket, and rest, curled in the tinged landscape, trusting the perception of our creator. When it seems like nothing’s happening, God is.

God, are you here?
I Am.
Are you?