I throw open the window coverings in our bedroom and I am in awe at a massive fog back snaking its way down the valley. Above, the sky is clear, and ever so gradually growing lighter as dawn draws near. Below, well those souls in the valley have pretty poor visibility this morning.
Not long ago, I was driving on a sunny Friday afternoon when it was not yet spring, but spring was beginning to reveal herself. The road, that a few miles back was covered in compact snow, was bare and dry. Snowmelt darkened the roadside pullouts. On the side of the road, black and dirty piles of snow sat in sparkling pools as they gradually melted.
I drove past a still-frozen lake. It was purported to be the longest lake in the area. It was white with ice and snow, and there were a handful of ice fishing huts on it, their dark gray, the only break in the all-encompassing white.
Above the lake, fog had settled. It sat, still and silent, like a blanket. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. The words came to mind and God was there. Hovering—there and everywhere. What I saw with my eyes, and perceived with my imagination, a manifestation of truth: wherever I am, so too is God.
The hovering ghostly spectre wasn’t the actual spirit of God, and yet it was. Everywhere. In the blue and cloudless sky, in the dust on the side of the road, and yes, even in the ghostly white spectre hovering over the frozen lake.
I was reminded that I wasn’t alone. There was a gift of reassurance in the fog if I had a heart with which to receive it. I drove on, my eyes pulled again and again to the lake, and the white, and the hovering, and I remembered that I was loved. And God hovered in my car, and on the lake, and everywhere, at the same time and without limit.
Now, as the fog leviathan moves through the valley, the Spirit of God hovers still. Out there, and in here. World without end.
