False Comfort
Yesterday, we were driving home from visiting friends in New Hampshire. It had been snowing earlier, but as we ventured southward, the sun found its way through the clouds, showcasing the powdery white trees.
While the air appeared to be still, every so often a burst of snow would descend upon the road like a cloud, evidence that the wind wanted to make its presence known.
"The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." - John 3:8
There is an eerie feeling driving through a blinding cloud of snow, knowing it is temporary blindness, and praying that the cars ahead keep their pace without making any sudden changes in position or speed.
It is one thing to be a child careening down a slope with friends, exploding through a shower of snow from one of those snowmaking machines. That's fun. Everyone is experiencing the same thing for the same reason, so it isn't thought to be dangerous.
It is quite a different experience traveling sixty miles an hour, with many going even faster, and finding yourself suddenly blinded. Reason tells you it will pass like the blink of an eye, but in that instant, when the windshield is pure white, all connection with the senses, those life links to the world we know are lost, that is the moment of faith.
In today's reading, Jesus is telling Nicodemus about faith.
Those fleeting moments in my life, like the white-out moments in the car, when I lose connection with the world and let go of my sense of control, those are the moments I should treasure.
Everything else, it seems, is false comfort, a belief in the strength of those things that seem permanent, or at least more secure than the wind and the snow.
The other night, we were driving in dense fog on a winding country road. Unlike the snow bursts on the highway, the rolling fog that consumed the car without warning as we dipped into a curve was more frightening, unpredictable and much more challenging.
Each time the fog thinned and we could see what lay ahead, a strange feeling came over me, part thankfulness and part disappointment. While the plunge into blindness was scary, the experience was exhilarating, like a sudden awakening, charging my senses with a call to be even more alert than before.
We are strange creatures, aren't we, wanting security but seeking danger and uncertainty as a thrill, a challenge and a memory to be cherished?
God knows we are like that. He made us that way, eager, alert, alive, seeking something of his presence in the blindness, so we will know we are not alone.
That is what I get from this reading. But I wonder. What did Nicodemus get?
More to come...