Beauty! A lovely snowfall this week. Snow-attack would be closer, though, since a 40+ mph wind was behind it. The sea smashed and raged below my house, the cliff-facing windows were smothered in white. I was happy. I’ve been off-island, strangely missing the dark and temper of this season. My son, in California, is wistful for blizzards and violent skies. I understand. Once you live under such drama, even the sunny places our bodies crave bore us after awhile.
While “Outside,” I got to see the new James Bond movie, Skyfall. I’m not a huge 007 fan, for so many reasons, but I have watched most of the recent ones, and even a few of the older ones, which I immediately regretted. I seldom finished them.
But, the franchise rises again, decidedly smarter and better. This one may be the best of the bunch. One of my favorite moments in the movie is this brief exchange:
(Bond: “Everyone needs a hobby."
Smarmy Enemy: "What’s yours?
Bond: "Resurrection")
And so it is. Bond is shot from atop a moving train, falls hundreds of feet from the sky into a waterfall. He survives, but we’ve no idea how. We know surviving three falls---a bullet, a skyfall and a waterfall is impossible, which is why he utters the word “resurrection.” He once was dead, and he lives again. He is weakened, wounded, his body not what it once was. He still bears the scar of a bullet in his shoulder. But he has lives to save, and one particular evil life to end. As long as his heart beats, he cannot keep from his mission.
I just found out this week that snow is alive. That its nucleus is often a living microbe around which the snowflake is formed. When researchers took snow samples from 19 locations around the world, they discovered that as much as 85% of the nucleus of snow in the warmer temperatures is living bacteria.
The snowflake, each one, though frozen into immobility, yet is alive.
My life is full of resurrections. This week alone, I was gone, and now I am home. I am sick now, almost immobilized, but I will soon be well. My husband and I are married 35 years now---the cycles of dying and reviving beyond counting. The snow falls and we hibernate in the dark, knowing the long lit days will return. I glimpse my own selfish heart, and die with a thousand lashings---and I remember forgiveness and get up again. A friend cannot smile or walk, and a visit makes her laugh.
How do we rise up? The snowflake is intricately structured around a living speck, invisible to the eye. And us. We too are built around a life invisible to the eye, but more fully alive than anything we can see. Because of that life, and because of that first rising-from-death, resurrection becomes our habit. Even in the most inhospitable places, places where we stumble and fall---blizzards, sickness, selfishness, pain---life remains.
It is God’s hobby to bring life out of death, and if we ask for it, he can do the same for us. His hobby will become the pattern of our lives.
May I pray for you this week, that you would rise up with new life? I would be honored to lift your name to the God of Hope and Life.
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