“Even now,” declares the LORD, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.” Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the LORD your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity. ~Joel 2:12-13It has been about three years. So many missed observations, so many missed homilies that were spoken in my absence, perhaps not striking an ear at all. Do I continue this drought of spiritual numbness, do I let the monotony of life have its way with my soul? Yet, there has been nudges to return, and provocations to find my way back into the trails. Life has a way of keeping us out of the places of richness, and out of the quarries of spiritual resource. I do wonder why. I haven't been doing meaningless work these past three years, but I have deprived myself of some meaning, and some grounding.
In any case, I must return, and I desire to return again to the trail head. I do not begin again out of mere obligation but mostly out of desire and attraction. Perhaps it was the subtle voices of my winged friends as I made my way out to the car one early morning, or perhaps the vast expanse of the universe noticed while rushing out to dump the trash late at night. Whichever the cause, I must slow for a season again, and change gears to a speed that is more bearable and spiritually sustainable.
Guilt is a funny thing, not in the chuckles and laughter kind of way, but smiles of confusion and mystery seem to be the only gestures of home for a face whose soul has no other place to find rest. I often feel guilty of trespasses that push me away from God, and that same guilt seems to linger like a heavy fog, while keeping me away from the same God who I know only true life can be derived from. Why do we keep ourselves from that which we know we need?
I wonder how many of us see ourselves as that prodigal child who Christ paints the picture of in his notable parable, and analogy of the Kingdom. For some reason or another we have wandered away from our home and the places of meaning. In most cases it is out of our own error of both commission and omission that we find ourselves lost. Alone, and without drive and purpose, we often finds ourselves unfulfilled, empty, and alongside the dirty swine, while longing for even the pods they devour nonchalantly.
"Return to me" God calls out repeatedly. As the Father welcomes and celebrates the return of His child, so too God, in our trivial busyness, nudges us home, and declares the blessed message of his mercy and compassion, even in the midst of our own cloud of guilt.
As I made my way back into the woods, and began to hear the frantic activity of the wild, I wondered if the creatures were singing any differently today. Perhaps at this moment they were responding to their Maker who was calling them to rejoice with him in the return of His son. Perhaps they heard God's proclamation "celebrate with me, for my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found"~Luke 15:24
