The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” John 3:8

Snow leopards are one of the world’s rarest, most elusive and little studied large animals. They are generally very shy and well camouflaged, and hardly ever seen. Most encounters involve villagers looking for firewood or herding animals. The first photograph of one in the wild was taken in 1970 by the legendary zoologist George Schaller. Its long tail gives it amazing balance as it scales mountains as high as 18,000 feet. Known to catch a falling rock with its paw, the snow leopard can sneak up on its prey and not to be heard.  It is so elusive the locals call him the Holy Spirit of the mountains.

Have you ever felt like God’s presence is as elusive as the snow leopard? He shows up, it seems, in his time and usually by surprise. Then, just as often it feels as if he has left you waiting for some sign or sense that he is near. Living in this linear time bound world, I can easily miss precious, life changing, “sightings” when God is breaking in. The feeling that life is somewhere up ahead and that I must strive for it, or that life is behind in some former lost and lamented time, can squeeze life now in God out. However, God is always in the Eternal Now, as Thomas Kelly describes it. Behind this busy active life of time and place, the Eternal Now of God is knocking, and He desires to enter our world through us and change time for eternity. This invasion of God’s presence can be upsetting to a life driven by the ticking of the clock of progress. Don’t we sometimes look upon those who are yielding to the Eternal Presence as odd and out of place? Yet, we intuitively know there is something entirely credible about their compliance to God.   Sighting are not as rare for those who wait on God, those who learn to live in both times zones simultaneously – time now and Eternal Now.   Yes, and that is the Christian calling and joy.

“The sooner we stop thinking we are the energetic operators of religion and discover that God is at work, as the aggressor, the invader, the initiator, so much the sooner do we discover that our task is to call men to be still and know, listen, hearken in quiet invitation to the subtle promptings of the Divine. “ (Thomas Kelly)

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Our lives, it seems to me, are too often regulated by the ever present ticking clock, and so unwanted pauses are uncomfortable for me.   I  remember the carefree days of childhood where time flowed with a rhythm of play, eat, rest, work and imagine. That’s more what God’s movements are like.  God is not going to allow us to fit him into our calendars and clocks.

“OBJECTS AND EXPERIENCES ACQUIRE VALUE THROUGH THE ACT OF WAITING. . . . IF INSTANT GRATIFICATION DEVALUES, IF IMPATIENCE IS A FORM OF GREED, PERHAPS PATIENCE, THEN, IS A GENEROSITY, AN INTENTIONAL GIVING OF ONE’S TIME, A GIVING OF ONESELF.”  On Waiting, Harold Schweizer

“Master, if you had been here, my brother would not have died,” Martha blurts out.  Her confusion and grief overwhelm her as she questions the Lord’s sense of timing. (John 11)

By the time Jesus had arrived, Lazarus had been dead for four days and the mourners were already gathered.  By any cultural standard that is too late.  Too late for a miracle and barely on time for a pastoral homily.

Time, chasing us like the crocodile in Peter Pan, threatens to run out on us before the opportunity of a lifetime comes along.  We think, “I’m too old and too weak or out of ideas and money, empty of hope and full of despair. Lord it’s too late for me.”   “How long, Oh Lord?” David prays in the Psalms.  However, when we are completely out of options, it is never too late for God.

HEALING IS OUT OF THE QUESTION NOW FOR LAZURUS, BUT NOT RESURRECTION! “LAZARUS COME FORTH,” JESUS CRIES. AND THE DEAD MAN LIVES.

When the plane finally arrives, I lost half a night of sleep and moved my car a half a dozen times to save money. Our guests have endured worse, having flown through traumatic turbulence that left them looking ghost like. They, like Lazarus, have passed through death and still live, happy to be alive.

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