When the Train is Long Gone

4:30 a.m. our large, black Newfie attacks the front door with a deep, demanding “woof”.

I stumble down the stairs, stagger my way to the door handle, and slowly pull, as the light of my eyes meet morning, barely opening to the night.

I follow him in the dark. Beccause strength is always worth following. Bravery, loyalty, commitment, is rare in this world that seems to be crumbling.

He makes his way to the back property, where the largest snake I’ve ever seen on our land was recently slithering past our pre-made garden.

Life and vegetables and nutrients are being grown, but there is always something nearby, taughting our harvest, pointing our eyes just a few feet to one side…

Plummeting our hearts into fear or defeatism, before we can eat what we’ve planted.

And I have found over the years, the long, thoughtful plans of The Great Gardener, are often much like my husbands, cultivating something unseen…

Planting small seeds, others often don’t see.

Yet, with strength and might and time….lots of time….beautiful things are growing.

God is never in a hurry.

And we can dictate a lot of things in this world. But we can’t make rains come, sun stop burning. We can’t command the God of heavens to grow what’s underneath us. We are only petty gardeners.

He is the life beneath us, cultuvating life continually….

Calling, form day, from the deep evening night.

And he has called me forth, early today. Earlier than usual.

My giant beast of a dog, shakes with loud barks echoing through the early morning light.

I hear a car rattling against the rails of a track, moving at a pace I have lacked seeing for many months.

I absorb it in, this fervent pace of fury that used to mark my early mornings and take over my life until evening.

I was that train. Was I happy?

The cars bolted together, shift along the distant tracks. And it’s an hour late. A train usually coming at 3:30 a..m. now finds its way to a place and a land where worship has now been outlawed.

West coast living. The train. Swishing by. Like a torrent. Blind to the quiet lives all around it.

I silence my big, furry friend. Pat him for his faithfulness to guard, protect, bark when he hears strange sounds plowing unforgiving, boldly through the night.

Yet, I see God’s people silent. Longing for the rails that drown out their own doubts, and hid their own inner questions…

Can we run from the pause now? Can we spin and whirl and skip this fracture of everything furious and speedy?

Or must we sit, still, in the silence of early morning. And embrace this world of beauty and endless possiblities?

Must we tilt our heads low and acknowledge nothing good comes from frantic fury?

Can we rip our to-do-lists and throw them in the fire, as the sun rises to what true faith looks like?

And perhaps faith isn’t a train, zooming past a world remaining stagnant.

Perhaps true faith is bended knee, dirty jeans, hands filthy with the soil of tomorrow drapped beneath your fingernails.

What if faith was turning away from agendas and to-do lists, placing our back against the mindless train, getting low and listening to the little people around us…

Those filled with promise, funny sentences, and giggling antics?

Medicine to weary warriors.

Or have we all together just given up on healing? Layed out to die, our anchor in a land, given to us as freedom, by those brave enough to leave the noise and settle in a new nation?

Have we lulled ourselves to sleep? A land awake. A people sleeping?

Do we forsaken the gift that’s in today for the hysteria of media, opinions, fears slithering close to us, like the snake by my vegetable garden?

The evenings have been warm, slow, saturated with a stillness I haven’t known since childhood.

And yes childhood, like a distant dream. A promise of much, yet the peacefulness of waiting.

I remember finding sticks in Texas, pulling toads out of a swampy basin in Georgia with my brother who was my best friend.

I remember living, not fast, not railroad lightening speed, but slow and methodic, intentional and in the moment…

No less valuable living that the hurried, now unbusied….

But slow; seeing what was before me. Following my brother as if he was a hero in some red cape, leading me in a charge towards a courageous tomorrow.

It was the only courage I had, really…there in his eyes.

I told him the other day, “Any good memory of my childhood I had, always included you.”

When was the last time we spoke words of purpose, shared life and encouragement as if it was our final day, last breathe?

What would you want someone to know if you had no promise of tomorrow? What has been left unsaid, unspoken? Unshared? Forgotten?

Human connections are not just a commodity. They are the life blood of servants, created by God, for the fellowship of others, those all around us.

And yet, we act as if relationships are unnecessary or even aggravating.

My mother taught me well. “People matter. People are all that will matter when we are gone.”

People hold memories, plants and trees and even our pets won’t hold onto.

Even flowers fade and gardens die….but the souls of man live on. They carry on our song, hold inside our being, a garden that never dies.

People create a beautiful tapestry in our minds. And the more color and diversity, the more beautiful that’s creation.

I heard my littlest giggle the other day. She threw her head back on the swing and pulled in a belly full of air, before shooting it outward, in full blown laughter.

When was the last time I laughed like that? You laughed like that?

Is our world still, but our minds like the train, moving at light-speed, yet going nowhere?

I want to see the hummingbird’s wings flap almost invisible as they suck the nector, placed in our feeder by my husband.

I want to close the door at evening and watch with my family, the four little white tails eating the evening clover after a boiling day of heat.

And yet, we worry.

We rage in protection, fighting for what we want, vy and demand we be something….

When what if our only call was to be present, in this moment?

Be open and aware and awake to a world calling out in perfect harmony, snakes and dogs and gardens and all….

And accept the reality that we were made for eachother, in peace and closeness and perfect harmony, living beside one another without warring vengence or condemning hate?

Resting in His sounds of peace. Being still as the light does wake. And the trains of all our worries and furry and fears and doubts are long gone….

Here. In the beauty of it all.

Trusting a God who still sees us.