Snapshots: lily pad lake

“Limiting the resurrection either to the past or to the future makes the present risenness of Jesus largely irrelevant, safeguards us from interference with the ordinary rounds and daily routine of our lives, and preempts communion now with Jesus as a living person.” -Brennan Manning

For Mother’s Day we took a late afternoon trip to the lake– a small one tucked near our town, the perfect surface and size for kayaking.

The boys wore white t-shirts and swim shorts, and we had snacks packed for dinner.

Travis sent me into the water first. I had forgotten what the stillness of lake water stirs in me. I kayaked away until Eliot was a little blue speck of boy screaming, “MOM!!”

I paddled a few feet and then stopped, pulled my knees up to my chest and watched the stillness.

This place reminds me of Uganda, of being on the Nile River and not fully understanding its beauty.

And on the water it’s me and it’s Him.

I thanked Him for this town, for these friends. And I asked to see His kingdom around us now, while longing for the wholeness of a new earth. I longed for the wholeness.

I scanned the edge of the lake with my blue kayak, where the trees sunk into the mud and branches sat under the surface of the water, stoic as rapids passed by overhead.

Then I saw them: a tiny sea of lily pads, their faces toward the sun.

And I approached them with the caution of a curious child, my first thought being, what creatures lurk beneath? will my kayak get stuck here?

Close enough to their edges, I saw the green of their surfaces, and their stems reaching down into the depths of the water.

And I thought, I want to be like the lily pads. My eyes to the sun, my roots plummeting down into deep sustenance and pure water.

The lily pads had life, have life, will continue with life, and that’s exactly what I want here as we close a 4-year season and open up a 5-year one.

And back at the quilt on the grass under the shade of the tree, Eliot played Christmas songs on the iPod and asked if Bilbo Baggins was riding in a kayak, too. Isaiah curiously dug in the picnic basket for the many treasures it contained, enthralled as only an 8-month old can be.

These moments are what Manning calls our ordinary rounds and daily routine, our communion with the living person of Jesus.

If I saw Jesus in a lily pad yesterday, what might I see Him in today?