When everything stops, there is this eerie, all-encompassing silence that descends.

                All the noise that surrounds us in our time, this noise that we become so accustomed to, is gone as though some heavy blanket has come down and absorbed it the way we might soak up a spill with a towel.  A heavy blanket of snow absorbs sound like that.

                In addition, though, all of the traffic is still after one of these storms. Cars and trucks are deserted, abandoned by their drivers, stuck in the snow. No machinery rumbles. Even the electricity is down in this area. A stillness has descended, and the sounds we have learned to ignore are gone. A heavy snow transforms our habitat. This could be long years ago, centuries or millennia ago—even back to a world of prehistory before our piddling species awakened to traipse the planet and tinker with whatever we in our impudence have decided to adjust.

                But in such an event there descends an ominous stillness that can be frightening. Something is the matter. At least that is a first impression, that there is something wrong. But for me, it is one of the moments when I sense this hidden tug, an awareness that has crept upon me quietly, stealthily, with the threatening, lilting stride of one of the feral cats.

Perhaps that is why sometimes I sense God as one of the big predator cats we have learned to be in awe of. When we were living so near the earth, out in the wild, as no doubt some distant tribes and cultures do today, we have understood the necessity to hide from such a predator. And so it may seem strange that I would suggest that God is like one of these ominous creatures.

But it isn’t necessarily the instinctive fear I am talking about here, though it might be well to think of that as well. After all, the Bible says we ought to fear God. Is that because God might rend and tear, devour us hungrily? If this were my church Beginner class years ago where wonderful ladies helped us young ones consider God and what it means to have a relationship with him, we would be singing little songs about how God loves us, and these nice ladies would not whisper about the dangers. And neither am I, though you may be wondering where this is leading.

                I’m just saying that there is an area biblically where we are encouraged to fear God as we would fear anything that is so far beyond our understanding, even as we would fear the raging intensity of a snow storm where the world is transformed into a primal landscape and all we can do is hide, having crept into some protected area.

Of course today we have structures—houses and buildings with heat and environments that effectively shut out the elements. But still, we have a healthy respect for the ominous power of nature. And I would argue that this is a good analogy to that Beginner class. Sometimes we awaken in the Spring to days of beauty: the scent of earth and the curved, delicate green of new chutes and plant life. Even the birds are alive and celebrating, chirruping and gathering their morning meal from air and soil. Then, we can smile at our children and truthfully say that nature is a happy, beautiful environment that makes our hearts sing.

                               

                But of course even as we tell our children about the fragrant beauty and warmth of nature in the Spring, we know from long experience that nature has a potential ferocity that can gather itself into frightening storms that in any season can leave marks upon the world and, as the children’s stories show, blow our houses down as effectively as the wolf who huffed and puffed.

                We are a species surrounded on every side by potential danger and uncertainty. But as for this presence we have named God, does it make us want to hide that there is a side of him that is like the coiled, potentially deadly beauty of the lilting walk of a tiger or some other predator cat as it moves silently through the jungle?

                And what does it mean, then, that this presence, this entity we name God, has stalked us since even before we were here in our present form? Certainly that is a puzzle we must work out as we edge into the future. But for now, we should be confident that this presence has long-term plans for us. We are naturally uneasy and even frightened. This entity is beyond our comprehension. Even the Bible says we ought to be in awe bordering on fear when considering a presence beyond our capacity to understand.

                But we must, as each generation before us has attempted with varying degrees of success, be aggressive in our study of this entity and in our hunger to grow and better understand what it is we are destined to become. Furthermore, we must discover what it means to be part of this presence, to have a relationship with this presence.

                If there is any condemnation of our present generation, it lies here. We have lost any sense of aggressively pursuing this. We have the audacity to yawn in the vicinity of this incredible mystery. We are the most disrespectful brats, failing even to sense the enormity of this presence, this entity that pursues us always. Even in the aftermath of a storm of snow, we yawn and simply wait in our warm environments for it to dissolve.

                We are a culture now that ignores the presence of God and is blind to our spiritual potential. We laugh at the suggestion that any significant understanding of the Universe will be impossible without an aggressive pursuit of this entity. We would do well to listen after a snow, or at any time when we can for just a bit step out of the constant distractions of this modern world we inhabit. 

                There is much that awaits us, if we will only learn to sense what is there that we have trained ourselves to ignore. Most notably, this entity we so awkwardly name, simply, God is there in every moment of every day, waiting for the time when we might awaken from this self-imposed stupor that defines our time and inhibits our ability to sense what is there, whether that be after a big snow or any moment of any day.