October 12, 2009
HOVERINGS
We travelled in the mountains for a bit this weekend, and twice I saw something truly breathtaking.
Hovering.
First a kestrel...a smallish, orange and blue hawk with round dark ovals on the sides. The size of a dove, and hovering probably 30 feet off the ground.
Then much later, a hawk...much larger, white and dark brown - streaked boldly....with very dark tips on wing.
Both doing the same thing - hovering.
When a bird hovers it is because it wants to stay in one place and has spotted something that might satisfy its hunger right below. So it hovers...wings going back and forth, rather than up and down....in a very constricted pattern, designed to move air just the right way to keep it in one place (even in the wind). And all the time, it's head is bent over tightly with fixed gaze at the ground.
It will hold that pattern for a number of seconds and then perhaps turn quickly into a dive to the ground below to lay hold of its vision.
It is an amazing moment of flight....and a God-designed process in the cycle of need and supply and overall balance in nature.
And I thought about the first hovering
....of the Spirit of God over a formless earth, dark and watery and lifeless.
"And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, let there be light..." Genesis 1:2-3 -
Ah, so the Spirit of God was hovering when it was all chaotic darkness....waiting to bring forth light, life, order, people, process, meaning.
He did not wait until everything was in order before He began His presence process.
He appeared in the darkness and turned it into light...into the formlessness and gave it intricate meaning and design.
Hovering over....intently watching, astonishingly purposeful.
Holy Spirit, would you hover over me today?
Would you dive into my day, over and over, to satisfy the hungers of my heart?
When my attempts at form result in void, would you change it all and make it God-like?
Only when You are hovering, Lord, do I truly experience life.
Acts 2:1-4
David
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1 comment:
We have to get past emotional hunger, which is an unhinged imitation of the deeper, real hunger. We have to stop feeding the superficial appetites and placing this activity at the center of religious life, creating our own sacrament. We fool ourselves time after time this way. "Feeling" it doesn't make it real, and God is no more present at such moments than at others. In fact, it is in the darkest moments where all we have is faith that we find out what is real, and we shudder to remember our flimsy religious system based on good vibrations. That idea or system is nothing new. Far from being the cutting edge of religious evolution, it has been tried in many different forms over the ages, the Romantic movement being one of the last clearly defined cultural movements to exalt it.
As members of Adam's race, we are by definition morally retarded, but we are enabled moment by moment by the true body and blood in us by faith to surrender everything to God; we are enabled to copy the pattern Christ set for us and push aside false achievement-and-status-oriented motivations, dressed up as religion. God loved us just as much in our lowest moment as he does on our best-behaved days. He won't love us any more or less when we try to impress him with "christian" achievements, though he might be saddened by the low view of him this reveals.
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