Sunday, November 15, 2009

Dear God,

Thank you, Almighty God, for bringing us safely to the desert mountain monastery. Although the 13 mile drive up the mountain on a wet road was scary, you guided us to the holy mountain. I shouted praise because just one hour later tiny ice pellets came down in narrow, finger-like sheets. I stood and watched in awe as the mountains disappeared in the clouds. But nothing was more beautiful than the rainbow that appeared on the side of the mountain to the right of the guesthouse. Beautiful sunshine, light billowy clouds, heavy gray clouds, sheets of rain and ice, a rainbow and a clearing revealing nature’s wondrous beauty, I saw it all within two hours of our arrival. I am most grateful because if we had been just an hour later we could not have made it up to the monastery.

Early this morning before sunrise I turned on my Coleman lantern, lighted my Christ candle, put on my hand knitted prayer shawl and I began to read your holy word, listening for your voice woven into scripture. “Blessed are you who delights in me; for you are like a tree planted by a stream of water which yields fruit in season.” Although my own paraphrase from Psalm 1, I realize the longing of my heart is to be one planted by living water who produces the fruit of your spirit.

Sometimes I am so far from displaying your fruit. When I wander away in search of my own way, I fail to stand tall, drinking in your living water, quietly producing fruit. My leaves begin to wither and fall. My branches droop. But when I return, when I understand fully what it means to be planted in divine soil giving eternal life, I drink and drink. I let my roots go deeper, searching for sacred minerals that strengthen my inner core. I let the radiance of your light shine in me. I am aglow because I let the light of your love shine outward.

As I stepped out of my room and into the cold to walk to the bathroom, I could see the first dusting of snow on the ground. I oohed and aahed in the delicate beauty of the season. And in the journey up to the chapel as the dawn pushed its way into the darkness, I could see the snow covered mountains all around me, snowflakes resting on the arms of each cross along the path and fixed on each tree, limb and branch. How exquisite the landscape in this marvelous mountain canyon.

As I spend these days in silence, prayer, meditation, reading and studying, I am leaving room for your spirit to speak, to urge and challenge, to enlighten, to correct and to affirm. You are God who speaks even through the wind and the rain, sleet and ice, the God who changes and transforms.

Make me
like a
willow branch
that moves
with the wind,
dear God.
Let the wind
of your spirit
blow upon me,
I pray.

Love, Andrea