The following is an excerpt from Picnicking with God. I wrote this when I was grieved over my father’s death. He was born one hundred years ago today.
When I am grief-torn, I head for the hills, to that one spot in the cemetery where I can block out the fairgrounds and McDonald’s, and see only land, sky, and tombstones.
The sky is stunning—cerulean streaked with cirrus. Textbooks say cirrus clouds are generally the highest cloud formations in the sky, but I never can believe it. I’m sure I could stretch on tiptoes, grab that wispy beauty, and stuff it in my pocket. These clouds portend a change in the weather. I will never see these clouds again. This shining-blue, white-flecked sky will be gray guzzle soon. As the sun sinks, the clouds catch fire. A spark of orange here, a flame of crimson there, then the whole sky is a crisscross of glowing strands. I want to shout, “Don’t take them away! I can’t live without these clouds.” Then I remember the God who made the clouds, and I know joy in the land of the living where skies turn gray.
When my light-streaked patch on the ridge gathers gloaming, I rush toward the shimmering scrap down the hill. When that fades, I scamper farther downhill. It’s not the setting sun that smites my heart. It’s not the sky awash with violets and golds that crazes me. It’s the shimmer of the land in the slant of the last sun. I sit by a tombstone, in the lap of a granite woman weeping, my back to the setting sun. I revel in the land’s reflected glory: trees snapping against sky, grass golden, and hills clattering with cicadas.
I think of the project we have been enjoying on our translation breaks—matching photos to audio clips of my father telling stories about his childhood. I see the glory of my father’s life in the slanted afterglow of its setting. The glory of common grace, which is anything but commonplace. My brother-in-law, who grew up across the street from us said, “He was a father who yelled about wrecked cars and blown tires when, in fact, it was not really the cars or tires he was worried about.” I never knew. Like one blind from birth, I see people as trees walking.
I want to scream, “Don’t take him away. I can’t live without this glory-charged father whose eternity is?” Then I remember the Father who made my father, and I know joy in the land of the living where the caskets of fathers lie under my hill.
Like my father, who yelled about wrecked cars when he worried about his children, I’m not talking about clouds (or even fathers), but churches unborn, prodigals unrepentant, marriages undone, and friendships unraveled. It centers me to feel small against the sky. So, every time we pause the camera to correct our translations, I look at the sky framed by our window. “When I look into the blue sky, it seems . . . so full of a mysterious tenderness, that I could lie for centuries and wait for the dawning of the face of God out of the awful loving-kindness” (George MacDonald, Robert Falconer). Then I remember that I am waiting more than working.