A Night.

There are times when the appropriate praises to God cannot be transcribed, when the Spirit must intercede with groans. Tonight’s groan is something like a sigh mixed with an utterance of wonder, but also of remembrance.

Since the purpose of my writing this, though, is that some might share in my praises I will try to describe the night that led to such groans. And perhaps the Spirit will groan for you as well.

The heat of the day lingered in my house, especially around the computer monitor into which I had been staring for too many minutes. I could feel coolness sifting in through the screen door.

I followed it outside.

The moon lounged brightly in the Southeastern sky polishing the backyard to a shine. Such a quiet as man rarely knows hushed the voice even in my mind.

I walked slowly through firm, wet grass to a back fence that I have known since childhood, its white paint made young again in the moonlight. Leaning there I was serenaded by a chorus of crickets, prolific in its breadth, if not its harmony. As with most choruses the number and variety of voices more than compensated for their lack of training.

Over my right shoulder, to the northeast, a flash. A low cloud that I had thought unworthy of attention was actually the expanding top of a distant thunderhead. Lightning rebuked my judgment and for separate moments detailed the intricacies of a boiling storm.

Now sitting on the wooden fence I cherished my own stillness and smallness. The nearest crickets, silenced by my approach, took up their song again and joined the harmony, a song now punctuated silently by cymbals of popping fire.

How content I was to watch and wait for the next flash! How utterly satisfied with God’s sovereignty – His choices of when to snap a lightning bolt and in which chords his crickets would play.

And then, groan. Sweet groan.

Minefield

God had it in for me the last two days. He knew every step that I would take and he wired the path perfectly. Landmines and tripwires and holes covered with palm fronds. There was no trap that I wouldn't hit and He sat watching and smiling, just waiting for the fun to begin.

Little did I suspect, as I fumbled through my morning routine yesterday, the volatile reality that awaited me. I walked right into it.

Explosions of grace and freefalls of joy. Arrows of hope that pierced and opened my heart. Ropes that took me by the foot and yanked me to heights of thankfulness.

His timing, as they say, is perfect. And his grace is very, very good.