Overflowing

Before I stepped out of the car, I heard the deep-voiced roar of Elk Falls echoing up from the ravine below. I made my way carefully down a winding path, with the increasing thunder of the falls reverberating in my chest. The surrounding dense rain forest dripped with mist created by the swollen river cascading from it’s rock-strewn bed in a high free fall to the deep pool below. The constant overflow of glacial river water was mesmerizing, ever moving, a living force breathing mist and noise into the atmosphere like a prehistoric dragon. I thought about the thousands of years this particular flow of water had carved its way into the landscape, shaping the rocks and terrain bit by bit on its way to the sea.

God’s Word speaks often of abundance, generosity, and overflow, mostly in connection to the blessings of God to His children. His blessings run like a mighty river, cascading down in an overflowing stream of His good gifts and grace to undeserving mankind.
I have no problem imagining the never ending stream of God’s gifts because I know He is Jehovah Jireh, my provider, able to supply all I need and more. When I contemplate the abundance of God’s gifts to me, my heart spills over with gratitude.

“So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in Him, rooted and built up in Him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.”    (Col. 2:6-7 NIV)

I well remember the exhilaration of my early years of faith in Christ, yet they pale in comparison to the deep roots He has grown in me since, building and strengthening me on a firm foundation. Every trial He sees me through, every sure indication of His love and guidance, every reminder of how He cherishes me as His child, causes me to overflow with thanksgiving.

When I lived near Elk Falls, there were seasons when drought caused the falls to dwindle to a trickle. Spiritual drought has reduced my thanksgiving to a trickle at times, yet I recall that I am to “give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”(1Thess.5:18) Thanksgiving, even in difficult trials, has a burgeoning effect. The more  gratitude offered to a God who has limitless reasons to be thanked, the more thanksgiving overflows. And as words of thanks pour from a grateful heart, they carve the spiritual landscape of a person’s soul, forming a picture of Jesus.

Jesus said, “The heart overflows in the words a person speaks; your words reveal what’s within your heart.” (Luke 6:45 The Voice) His words reveal a heart overflowing with love and compassion for those He came to save. I want my words to reveal an abundance of thanksgiving to Him, coming from a heart overflowing with devotion and gratitude for Who He is and all He has given.

(oil painting of Elk Falls by the author, Valerie Ronald)

 

Soaring into the Light

After days of glowering clouds and rain, the sun finally breaks through, beaming on the wet upturned face of a grateful world. I drive to work beside the crescent lake where hundreds of Canada geese find sanctuary before their winter journey south. I love this stretch of road with water, trees and sky offering a new vista each time I pass by, especially when the geese are in residence. Night shadows linger over their sleepy forms floating on the lake this almost winter morning. Then with a flurry of wings on water, an arrow of geese arises, angling sharply skyward. Reaching the treetops, they break through gloom, their dusky forms instantly aglow with golden morning sunlight. Gilded wings flashing rhythmically, graceful necks outstretched, they form a phalanx across the blue-washed sky, and I am smitten.

I remember how that felt for me, flying out of the shadows into light. Set free to soar, breaking loose from a mud-mired existence up into the stratosphere of God’s love. I relive that burst into freedom in the moment by the lake and my heart sings with joy all over. It lingers with me as I go about my work tasks, until I take time to read a passage in a translation of the bible which speaks to my heart.

“Before time itself was measured, the Voice was speaking. The Voice was and is God. This celestial Word remained ever present with the Creator; His speech shaped the entire cosmos. Immersed in the practice of creating, all things that exist were birthed in Him. His breath filled all things with a living, breathing light — a light that thrives in the depths of darkness, blazes through murky bottoms. It cannot and will not be quenched.”
~ John 1:1-5 The Voice

“His breath filled all things with a living, breathing light.” I read this several times with the fresh image in my mind of birds in flight aflame in morning sunglow. God gives me these epiphanous moments as gifts drawing me back to Him. I have been walking in His love for a long time, so He well knows I need an occasional jolt with a glimpse of His glory. The living, breathing light He has imbued in all He has made speaks to me of His light gifted to me the moment I first knew Him as my savior. Not only a lessening of darkness in my spirit but a lightening of the burden of sin He lifted from me.

Is it any wonder Christ is so often described as light? He has made us to respond to light, to thrive on light, to require light as much as we need air. How much brighter His light shines when compared to the darkness of this sin-soaked world. He Himself said, “I am the light that shines through the cosmos; if you walk with Me, you will thrive in the nourishing light that gives light and will not know darkness.” ~ John 8:12

With His light I can find my way. He reveals all that I need to see to make it in this life. It could be that the geese took flight this morning because they were in search of food, but I like to think they were soaring into the light because it drew them upward. I too want to continually soar aloft where His living, breathing light cannot be quenched, where His love is the self-perpetuating glow warming all the world.

The Sound of His Roar

Light leaches from the sky, absorbed by dense, roiling clouds heavy with rain. The air holds its breath yet emits a sharp metallic scent, a forerunner of the storm to come. The long, flat horizon of the prairie is suddenly transformed into a vast stage on which sheets of lightning streak and flash. Frozen by brilliant light, trees, fences and farmhouses stand out in brilliant relief on the edge of the world. Then the curtain drops and miles away another silhouetted scene blazes forth.

I count after each lightning flash, waiting for the sound of thunder. At first it is a distant rumble, a growl far off. But as the storm draws closer, agitation in the clouds breaks out in fury close behind each burst of lightning. I feel the power of cosmic sound waves reverberating in my chest; I thrill at the forces unleashed in the heavens.

A scientific explanation of thunder does not capture it for me. “Thunder is caused by the rapid expansion of the air surrounding the path of a lightning bolt.” (Library of Congress) Not nearly dramatic enough to define this amazing phenomenon. I need to dip into my allegorical imagination and describe thunder as the voice of God in nature.

“Listen! Listen to the roar of His voice, to the rumbling that comes from His mouth. He unleashes His lightning beneath the whole heaven and sends it to the ends of the earth. After that comes the sound of His roar; He thunders with His majestic voice. When His voice resounds, He holds nothing back. God’s voice thunders in marvelous ways; He does great things beyond our understanding.” – Job 37:2-5  NIV

A thunderstorm brings me up short out of my small, self-absorbed life. Each day I make decisions, perform duties, seek knowledge, seldom looking beyond the next item on the agenda. I live with an air of entitlement, a smug expectation that all will continue as it has been, not often remembering at whose hand the universe holds together. But when my ears ring with primal thunder, I snap to attention.

This is His voice; the voice of my God, the voice of my Creator! I need to be reminded in just such a dramatic way. I need to know in the depths of my soul the answer to all the questions the Lord asks Job in chapters 38 to 40.  “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? What is the way to the place where the lightning is dispersed? Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain, and a path for the thunderstorm?”  And to the myriad of other rhetorical questions the Lord asks Job there is only one answer … El Shaddai, God Almighty.

The reality is, this God of thunder Who moves vast forces of nature at will is also the Lord Who is mighty to save, Who takes great delight in me, Who quiets me with His love, Who rejoices over me with singing. (Zeph. 3:17)

Come, thunder! Come, lightning! Proclaim the power of the Almighty before the whole earth and remind me Whose voice you speak with. I delight in the sound of it.