The New, New

I took a run through my favorite pathway the other day. The one the mercy storm decimated last September. It was my first time back since that tornado storm ripped treetops from limbs and flattened buildings along my favorite pathway. The path along which I trained for two half-marathons. I had spent many hours walking many miles in that arboretum before it became a wind-tunnel’s playground. And it was time for me to return.

It was a new experience for me in so many ways. And my visit prompted a whole new set of challenges from those I had faced in years gone by. It was the challenge of a new season. For me, it was a redefining of the truth of newness.

First, it was a run. In times past, it’s always been a walk. Or a walk mixed with some running. This time, though, it was a run mixed with some walking. A new challenge for me. But that’s not the redefining. The new landscape – the missing trees, the flat earth having replaced the tree-lined streets and the buildings that once proudly stood along the way – it created an unexpected sense of new inside of me. Not the crazy-excited kind like what comes with a new car or a new pair of shoes. It was a more somber, almost sacred kind of new. Like what happens when you find yourself in an unknown place without a map. A little bit scared but not wanting to miss the new scenery for fear that you may never again have the chance to see it. That’s how I felt as I rounded the curve that led up the hill along the circuit I run. I didn’t want to miss the sacred of what was coming because I was lost in the sadness of what was gone.

And then, just to my left, right along the trees that still remain in the forest next to path, I noticed four yellowish-green sprouts.

 The ever-faithful return of the new. Spring will come! And all will be new again. The ground will once again produce tulips and daffodils and beautiful blooms. Even amidst the newly created treelessness that now marks that favorite pathway of mine. God is in the process of redecorating. And last fall, He did a little remodeling as well. And now, His faithful newness will shine in an altogether new way.