scents and home

8.30.17

I went for a run last night along the trail. The sweet, heady scent of ripe blackberries hung around me in the darkness, and shapes of rabbits scampered around under bushes and across patches of grass. A piece of moon hung in the sky, calm and serene after its late action in front of the sun. Silver lake stretched out to the left of me, the dot of the moon bobbing along on its surface as I ran.

It was a venting kind of run. One of those with a slightly melancholy soundtrack that admits the brokenness of myself and of this world yet clings to the hope of One who will return and make all things right.

No, my life was not going wrong. Not really at all. It wasn’t that.

It’s all this sin that remains and works its way in with persistent tentacles. It wasn’t exactly news of a once-close friend’s divorce. Or the news of Houston families losing homes. Or my Grandpa fighting cancer. Or the sometimes-claustrophobia of “city” life. Or my pent up energy after spending all day in front of the computer. Or the uncertainty of coming years.

In a sense it was all those things and none of those things. I suppose the theological term would be “results of the fall,” but when it hits the streets of life it becomes personal and altogether too real.

Sometimes you gotta go on a run and let yourself cry. Lament, too, is part of proper theology.

Only—I remind myself—take care that the cry of “not right!” turns to the One whose coming will heal what, after perfection, was made wrong; the One who promised to gather all His people from the four corners of the earth to dwell in a land with Him (Jer. 23:8; Rev. 21:3).

May every moment that reminds us we have not yet arrived there drive us to let go of this earth a bit more and to hope more steadfastly in that coming land.

My forgetful, wandering heart, for one, desperately needs those reminders.