Unusual

It seems that we’ve had a front row seat to a number of uncommon occurrences during the Earth’s last trip around the sky’s big ball of fire. Pandemics don’t come around these parts every day, but we’ve had a chance to eat our weight in popcorn as we’ve watched that film continue to roll. Hurricanes are a nearly-every-year phenomenon around here, but not the likes of Hurricane Laura that decided to pay us an uninvited visit last Summer. And ice storms are practically unheard of save a once every 20 or 30 year accidental dip of Polar air this far south, but there we were a week ago having been invaded by the Arctic down here in the Swamp. There are a number of ways to describe the most recent run through the calendar, but I’ll stick with the simple term – UNUSUAL.

Rather than take a negative slant to the UNUSUAL nature of the past year, I’d rather view it through a lens of positivity by reflecting upon the UNUSUAL happy times that took place as a result of the UNUSUAL circumstances of life around us. Not exhaustive at all, and perhaps not in chronological order, a rundown of happy UNUSUALS follows:

• Around the end of March/beginning of April, I had the UNUSUAL privilege of taking my newest grandson on his first fishing trip. Granted, he wasn’t even born until July, but he was in my daughter’s belly on that trip to Crooked Creek. Apart from being out of school during the week because of the COVID shutdowns, I’d have never gotten that opportunity.
• The life of a bi-vocational pastor is hectic to say the least. In mid-April I was able to share a boat with a dear friend that is a bi-vocational pastor like myself for a day on the lake catching fish while attending meetings via conference calls. Apart from the shutdowns, this UNUSUAL event would have never been possible and the much needed questioning and answering and venting and healing and relaxing we both enjoyed that day would have remained only wished for.
• Had Hurricane Laura never happened, our church would not have had the chance to serve our community by cutting trees and cleaning up damage. A co-teacher who happens to be an atheist would never have had the chance to tag along and see the love of Christ in action, because we would have been in school. It was an UNUSUAL blessing!
• As our children have grown and moved on with their own families and lives, opportunities to have them all or mostly-all together in one place become rare. Through the pandemic, hurricane, and ice storm, this UNUSUAL gathering happened a number of times because life slowed down and we had time to gather. The picture atop this post is proof of one of these times. This Daddy just might have even shed an UNUSUAL tear as he contemplated the unique beauty of the moment.

And now, in less than one full week after the last of the ice has melted away, we’re back to the usual seventy-something degree days, and pollen is beginning to rear its ugly green head – Louisiana! Everything is getting back to normal, but as for me, there is a growing longing for that which is UNUSUAL. I desire disruptions to the warp-speed lives that have become so common, because a disruption seems to be the only brake that works on our lives these days. I yearn for more worship services that are stripped down to instruments not connected to an amplifier, congregants that had no electricity rendering them unconcerned with their outward appearance, and the UNUSUAL reality that just being in the presence of God really is enough. It seems that when the UNUSUAL happens in our lives, God has the opportunity to visit with our inner being in what is, unfortunately, all too often an UNUSUAL experience.

Of course, I wish not for another pandemic, hurricane, or ice storm, but I do wish for a dose of simplicity to revisit our world. An old Chris Tomlin song repeats this phrase to the Lord: “And all I have in You is more than enough.” This is an UNUSUAL recognition in this give-me-more society, but it is something that has been strongly realized by many during the recent year of UNUSUAL happenings. Perhaps these events have allowed you to experience some happy moments as well. Perhaps you have this same longing for time spent with family and friends rather than the normal go-go-go of modern life. I don’t blame you! But I remind you that it will never happen unless you make it happen. To prioritize what matters most will make you UNUSUAL in our world…DO IT ANYWAY! And then when we’ve finally exited the rat-race and are living the UNUSUAL life, we’ll compare experiences as we sit on the riverbank (6 feet apart of course!), clean up limbs from a storm, or slip and slide on the ice somewhere…In the Great Outdoors!