Moonlight Moments
Ministerial Meandering
Moonlight moments
Two-thirty in the morning, my dog’s rhythmic breathing reassures me, moonlight bleeds through the blinds and spills onto the bedclothes, heaped in a restless knot of tangled limbs and heartache. Where am I going?
I get out of bed and noiselessly step over Gracie who is suddenly chasing dream-rabbits. I pass the gently sleeping form of my wife and slide into the bathroom where I can close the door and look out of the window.
The moon is huge - as though pulled closer by more than tides - but she is alone in the night sky, as though nearby stars had run for cover in the safer darkness, far from her. But lower, the mountain tops are already vague and mysterious with the drapery of early mist, settling to a collar of white around the base of the tree-line.
Although I cannot see it, I can sense the coolness of the dew settling on the grass beneath me, and I breathe in the silence of the night.
Moments like these are precious and should not be rushed. They are times to make memories that you can store away for when the loneliness bird lays her stone egg in your chest, and your soul feels abandoned. You are not alone - you still have the bird.
Last night, Sheila called me to see the orange-pink of sunset over Mount Cheam at around 8.30 pm. I took Gracie out two hours later. Still, in the sky, along with the early stars - far in the west an orange glow clung to the underside of the night sky, opposite the rising moon. I felt that ache again, and just as a sigh was rising in my chest, I felt Gracie’s fur as she pushed against my leg to tell me she was still there with me.
These are the times I feel small and insignificant; it’s hardly surprising, because that is what I am - we all are. What is more surprising is that God cares - He actually gives a damn. Psalm 8 tells me that I am not alone in my astonishment; ‘When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?’
My moonlight moments reassure me that nothing in this world - in this universe - is worth exchanging for my relationship with my Creator, and the souls - both human and animal - He has given me for company on my journey back to Him.
Philip+