Moving

“I can see the sun moving!” Owen caught the yellow glare of it in streaks climbing the porch rail surrounded by early morning shadow. “It started here and has moved all the way up here already.”

“Wouldn’t it be neat if we had a camera that would capture it all day and then we could watch it fast to see the change?” I reflected.

And I wished it for much more than the sunshine on the porch. I began to wish I could show the steady hand of God that way too. What if people saw more clearly the path of the Son of God over their lives? What if time lapse were able to remove our absent minded moments and showed us the clear result of our worship? What if I could see my giving change a life? What if I could see my prayer startle awake the driver? What if I could see my obedience result in favor? What if I could see the hand of God?

I look at my first born boy, his long legs curled up tight so he can fit between me and the end of the couch. Almost as tall as I am and longing to be small enough to hold. Nearly 11 years since he came forth crying in shock at all the light and noise around him. He was content for over 30 hours, while I labored and changed around him to let him go. He resisted for three hours every push I presented, and the midwife with her doplar close up to my belly would shake her head and smile, “he’s happy as a clam in there,” while we waited in sweat and tears for him to appear. How those years have changed him, and yet I see his desire to remain. He is not one to rush past his years to do more, only to know more. Will I have to push him off to college the way I had to push him to his first breath? Will I have to push him to change his address the way I pushed him to change his lunch habits in kindergarten and try out the intimidating line of hot lunch buying? His brothers had no hesitation, but this one savors stillness, quiet, sameness and the security of being small. He knows he will become something bigger, he loves how tall he’s gotten, but just like his hours and hours of delivery, he will not leave me without some pushing. This one will do it because the millions of words he’s read tell him it’s smart, but he won’t run, he will move like summer sunshine. He will take each hour and each excuse to stay and try to find a better reason to stay.

The slow days of summer are no match for the growth he’s showing and I am grateful for the slow he offers me.

And I consider, that maybe it’s in the slow that we best see the hand of God. The stillness isn’t what blinds us, it’s the other way around. Seeing the result is not the same as seeing the movement. It is in the stillness that we best hear His voice. It is in the stillness that we most relish His presence. It is in the stillness that I can most appreciate His power, because the world is already full of movement, pushing for faster, asking for more, applauding what’s biggest and loudest and never satisfied.

God is different. He is bigger than all imagination, yet he designed the wings of a hummingbird to move in a figure eight pattern so they can hover still, and gave one human brain more neuronal synapses than there are stars accounted for in the universe. He is more powerful than all combined resources we could manage to accumulate, yet he frosted the rose with unmatched softness and keeps account of the number of hairs we hold on our head. God is great, He can move mountains, but His meekness is what baffles us.

Meekness isn’t fast, or measured, but it is moving. It’s a growing boy who rests content. Meekness is a mother who shelves her yelling. Meekness is a father who forgoes money for time with his child. Meekness is the Son of God who did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped. What power, what love, what a moving truth, to know that I can see His hand every day. Moving me to be more steady in loving as He loves. Patiently, faithfully, constantly, slowly moving.