Awareness

As I looked across the little park in my neighborhood this morning, the fog hung low on the horizon. As I paused to survey the scene, I was aware that a sense of peace and calm was invoked by the mysterious landscape. All seemed quiet. All seemed to take a pause to breathe deeply at the beginning of the new day.

Then, out of the fog, there appeared a person walking their faithful companions. It was if they materialized, arriving mysteriously, from another place or time. It was if they were just briefly passing through my world.

Sometimes, this is how my memories or bits and pieces of my dreams come to me. Unbidden and unplanned, they, too, seem to materialize from other places and other times to briefly pass through my world.

Faces of those loved and lost and deeply missed sometimes rise out of the fog of my busyness. From time to time a vivid scene from childhood becomes so real that I could swear I hear familiar voices and smell the unique aroma of home long ago lost. There have been moments when, In seasons of challenge and pain, an awareness of the presence of God comes.

Psalm 16 says, “You will make known to me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; In Your right hand there are pleasures forever.” As I get older, I have come to realize that among the gifts God brings to my life are such moments of memory and awareness; awareness that God is always present, even if the fog of anxiety or sin temporarily obscures my vision, and memory of those people and places through which I came to be aware of God in the first place. I am grateful for these gifts and will embrace them fully when they appear. In them I see a little more clearly both who God is and who I am.

Peace.