Hallowed Eves and Hallowed Days

Standing in a playground of brown scrub patches while the kids ran past me I wondered why the sky seemed bigger to me all of a sudden.

The wind whipped-lashed across the field.

I looked up then and saw the trees, all bare and leaf-less, bending, bending, bending.

Oh, right. The sky wasn’t bigger. I could just see more of it coming through the tree branches bracing for winter.

The birches, lithe, lean, suddenly began twisting to a fury of wind and my pants flap-slapped against my shins and I had to turn my face.

The sky to my left was menacing, black clouds roiling above the ancient elms. To my right the sun blazed glory and the grounded leaves were suddenly swept up in a current of russet and gold medallions funneling across the field.

Children started laughing.

Some rode the wind with their arms open wide. We all braced into the gale this time, our faces couldn’t help smiling in the golden torrent of leaves swirling above our heads. Then the black disappeared, the clouds scattered and the sun shone hard through mist raining diamonds in one small place.

I looked hard into it.

How does it rain wet jewels where there are no clouds?

I wondered if the children standing there could feel the fine-ness of the diamond drops washing over them.

I wondered at the beauty of the rainbow that suddenly appeared over our heads and why it makes me cry that God always promises us…because we can’t promise Him.

It was a hallowed moment.

It was a sacred and set apart moment and I was compelled to look at the day the Lord had made and rejoice in it.

Everyone on the playground was rejoicing because it was fierce and beautiful and dreadful and glorious all at the same time. A glimpse of heaven invading hardscrabble earth.

Light always trumps darkness.

His glory always trumps witchery and trickery.

It’s all hallowed, really, if we really look hard into it.

All our eves, all our days, all are sacred because of the Ancient of Days.