Every so often I read a sentence that stops me in my tracks. Here is the opening line from a book review:
In the deep sea, it is always night and it is always snowing.
The first half of that sentence made perfect sense. In the depths of ocean, we are beyond the reach of sunlight and so it must always be night. But snowing? Surely the author isn’t suggesting that particles of ice and snowflakes are floating in the water at the bottom of the ocean. So I read further:
A shower of so-called marine snow—made up of pale flecks of dead flesh, plants, sand, soot, and dust—sifts down from the world above…Many deep-sea creatures eat snow, or they eat the snow eaters.
“Marine snow” is such a vibrant image. It takes something familiar from my experiences here on land (snow) and transports that image into a place beyond my experience yet still just as alive and real (the ocean floor). Before reading that sentence, I’d pictured the ocean depths as dark and sterile; after reading the sentence, that place was changed forever into something active, mysterious-yet-graceful.
The language and rituals of faith ideally have that same impact on us. We walk through the world, processing what we see through the lens of human mortality, flesh and blood. But then a phrase hits us and opens up an entirely new reality:
Now we see in a mirror dimly; then we will see face to face…
I am with you always, even to the end of the age…
[God’s] power is at work within us, able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine…
Suddenly what we see is not all there is to see. This realm of touch, sight and sound is not all there is. There is a larger reality of spirit, of grace, of loving intentionality, of eternity. Our entry into that world is the gospel of Jesus Christ. And even if the full mystery of that gospel is beyond our minds to comprehend, it changes our lives forever by accepting that such a gospel exists—and exists for us.
The month of November has mundane doorways that invite us to walk through them and glimpse the life-changing, ever-near spiritual side of life. It may be what it feels like to carry a bag of groceries into church on Stewardship Sunday so that someone else may not be hungry. It may be putting together an Advent wreath of candles and imagining time from the perspective of the Christ who was, who is, and who is to come again. These are “thin places” in which eternity draws near and captures our spiritual imaginations once more.
The book review ended by noting that the marine snow and luminous wonders of the deep are mostly hidden from our view. As soon as you stop thinking about it, the deep can so easily vanish out of mind. The same can be said of faith and of God’s spirit that surrounds us each day. This day, take time to think about the wonder that is the spiritual door opened for us in Christ Jesus.
—Randy Bush