The girl hears the sound, long before she makes it to the roof. Falling out of bed and careful not to wake her parents, she pulls herself up through the skylight and edges out on dew-slippery tiles. A fresh sky greets her: soft pink first light beyond the hills and the earliest bird has begun it song. The first song of the morning.
What is he singing for, that first melody of the morning, she wonders, as the song unravels into the sky. Is he giving thanks for the end of the darkness? For the hand that kept and loved him through the watches of the night?
The last spots of darkness prickle the skyline and the girl remembers the black sky of the night before, all its heaviness. She remembers the stars too.
Perhaps he is thanking the sun, she thinks, that she showed up again to keep us all warm. Perhaps he wasn't sure if the sun would come again. Is he making sure she stays?
A breeze wraps round the girl and her thoughts turn to the day to come. Will today be okay? she wonders, as it stretches before her. Can we make it through again?
What a privilege to be invited into this moment. The quiet before things have happened.
This year, we have been invited into a space to do something new - in our case, replant a church - so we get to be the first. To turn up before work has really got going. We get to see the miracle of the first shoots appearing - the something from nothing moment, the dry bones waking, the first signs of life returning.
And yet even before that, before the magic, before anything has happened, we get to witness the song of the dawn. The song that praises the maker before he has moved. And this is a rare and precious privilege, because God treasures our faith more than we can imagine.
Right now, Sam and I are called to be here first in this new chapter and we are called first, to do nothing. To wait. And wait.
We wait for you to move.
But the thing is, waiting is hard. Waiting at the dawn, at the beginning of everything, when there is nothing to see but a quickly fading promise from the whispers of night, is a achingly hard.
Added to that, it is hard to start again. I don’t think I expected moving to feel quite so stripping. I haven’t done anything here yet, I know so few people, I struggle to feel I belong. Old insecurities flare in the face of so much unknown and my exposed weakness is painful. I miss some of my friends and the places that loved us well, so much it hurts. I am brimful of sadness, of saying goodbye to our old life, where we were given so much, and there something else too, that squeezes me breathless-tight around my chest. Am I afraid? Afraid I have used up your goodness and there is none left for today.
On top of that, can it be that I am ashamed to be this fragile. It's embarrass ing after all this time walking with you Jesus. After all your faithfulness? After a night star-studded with miracles, am I still afraid of the dark? Afraid you will not show up?
Yes. I am still afraid. And I am still ashamed to be afraid.
All the wobbly bits of me are revealed like one of those beach huts that perch on splintered legs rising from the sea, so vulnerable and exposed. So much of the comfort and familiarity of life is gone. Was this skinny, pathetic faith really all I was ever standing on?
The truth of course is yes. And no. We were only ever standing on you Jesus. Only ever surviving, propped up by grace and grace alone.
I imagine grace as something ephemeral, like fire or water, which seem to be bewitched in their movement, somehow not quite real. Grace, that seems so fragile, like it will dissipate under a heavy wind - and yet it is in fact because it is so flexible, so otherworldly, that it cannot be destroyed by logic or fairness or reason. It can not be stripped away like the sea. We never earned it, so it cannot be taken in a place where we have done nothing yet.
Grace was there before.
And his name was Jesus.
And so the falling away of the sea reveals that he must be there, holding us up, supporting our knee-less stilts.
‘But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.’
2 Corinthians 12:9
And so here I sit on the roof, watching the dawn. My nakedness exposed before you and all my incapability, my faithlessness and my shame for these on top.
I am nothing on my own Jesus, but I am with you. And somehow, though it stings, I know that this is how you want me to come, that is where you love me, reduced to my truest and smallest self.
It is clear that it is you who makes the morning.
You who fills the day.
So here I am in my weakness once more. And I will sing with the dawn though my heart will falter and my voice will crack. Because I know you are in this day. And because you are in it, it will be a good, good day.
The sun is climbing above the line of hills now, and the trees are alive with song: a thick chorus woven above the girl’s head.
The birds are singing for today, she decides - for the day that has not yet come.
Perhaps, though they do not know what it holds, they are singing because they know this new day will be full of the one who made it, and that is enough.
The girl pulls her jacket tighter over her pyjamas, shuts her eyes and lets her heart join in the song of the sky.
More on change here:
More on waiting here:
© Words and images, Katy Hollamby 2023
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