The Oasis - August 25, 2021
Author: Pastor Dan Hollis
August 25, 2021
I’d say we got pretty lucky here in York with Hurricane Henri. Some of the more worrying forecasts had people anywhere near New England shorelines getting ready for a rough time. I’m grateful that we ended up on the better end of the safe-than-sorry continuum, but it’s always good to be prepared. Weather in New England is all about preparing for the worst yet hoping for the best.
Because the roads were safe, I ended up doing a lot of driving yesterday for different things, and I spent much of the afternoon in a cloud. Sometimes it rained, sometimes it didn’t, but I didn’t see any gale-force winds. And all that time on the highway left me a lot of time to think.
You know, as windy as it can sometimes get here on the seacoast, we can’t actually see the wind. We can see the leaves move and we can feel it on our faces and we can hear it whistling around outside the house, and when the hurricanes and microbursts do come we experience it in all the damage it can do… but we can’t see the wind itself. Air is invisible.
And even this far into the summer, we can’t see sunshine either. We can see everything else because of the sunshine, and (don’t try this at home) we can see the sun if we look up and don’t think too hard about how fast it’s cooking our retinas, and we can definitely feel its warmth on our skin… but photons—light itself—are microscopic and way too fast to look at. They’re literally the fastest thing there is.
We can’t see love either. We can see its effects, and if we’re open to it we can feel it warm our hearts… but there are plenty of people who don’t believe it exists. Or who don’t believe they deserve it. Or don’t know how to give it. Or don’t think they’ll ever know what it feels like. But it’s real.
A life of faith is all about engaging with things that you can’t look directly at. A life of faith is about building a relationship with something that isn’t a straight line. A life of faith is about making meaning out of what feels inexplicable. The inexplicably beautiful and the inexplicably disastrous.
A life of faith is about dealing with the worst yet believing in the best.
And I hope you can enjoy the sun today.
“But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and all the domestic animals that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided; the fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed, the rain from the heavens was restrained, and the waters gradually receded from the earth.” Genesis 8:1-3a
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