Herman's Song

 

The cool of coming Fall hides in the shadows of the trees.  I look out the window through the rustling leaves--today I open my journal where I have recorded grace notes our faithful God has so generously scattered throughout the month of August to bless my heart.  Many came from His creation.

•  The evening I saw dragon flies dancing high above the road at twilight.  As I watched their glory dance it became a grace note, a song of God’s glory.
• The sweet twitter of a solitary bird hidden in the bushes announcing the arrival of autumn and a multitude of red winged blackbirds soon to gather in the cottonwood  trees. 
• Just last night I heard the call of geese flying low over our house. They turned in the direction of the beaver ponds deep in the wood and I suspected they already knew it to be a safe place to settle for the night.

Thinking about God’s wonderful creation brought back the time a skunk came to live under the woodshed we had converted into a bedroom and office where I did my writing.  Bud and I named him Herman and he soon became my special friend. 

Herman grew so familiar with us, sometimes in the late evening when I fed our black and white cats on the back porch he joined them. Imagine my surprise when I stepped on Herman’s bushy tail.  I screamed, but he didn’t seem to mind. We didn’t see him often in the daytime, although sometimes I met Herman at the steps---him coming out, me going in.

One hot summer night I couldn’t sleep, so I made up an old army cot in the yard nearby.  Sometime in the night I felt a soft touch like a kiss on my hand.  I opened my eyes and there was Herman.  Once again he touched my hand with his nose. It was a gentleman’s kiss and I would remember it forever.

As time passed, troubles came to our family as they often do, and a dull darkness settled over my spirit.  When I went to bed after one particularly trying day, my mind wouldn’t slow down and sleep didn’t come for a long time.

I was awakened suddenly in the middle of the night.  Music?  A song—could it be a night bird? I had never heard anything like it before. The sound was so beautiful, as it drifted through the open window.  I pushed back the blankets; my bare feet touched the floor and I seemed to hear a scratching sound outside. I leaned out the window and gasped. There Herman stood, with his tiny paws braced against the wall, his white strips shining  in the darkness. His small nose pointed upward as he sang.

I listened in awe and amazement. Herman's song was for me---my Father God had sent the little skunk with his incredibly beautiful song, to dispel the sadness and confusion which had gathered in my mind.  God was sending me songs in the night and I knew I would never forget that holy moment.

As I write this, I remember these words I paraphrase now, from Psalm 4:6b-8. LORD , you have lifted up the light of Your countenance upon me. You have put gladness in my heart, . . . I will both lie down in peace, and sleep; For You alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety. 

Note:  In his Book How to Understand Animal Talk, Author Vincent Brown writes of the song of the skunk.  He describes it as a sound rarely heard by people, a “whistling in the night—something like the cooing of a dove, only higher…going up and down the scale, at last ending in a long-drawn and soft purr like a cat’s.”

Joy in Life's Shadows

This spring, here in Oregon's Willamette Valley, has brought us many unseasonably cool and cloud-filled days.  Maybe that's why this verse caught my attention. "And the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way." [Exodus 13:21]

It seems that cloud and pillar of fire are bound up in Scripture with thoughts of guidance.  When Israel was wandering in the wilderness, each new day began with the sight of this impenetrable cloud. What would this day bring? Would they journey forward or would they wait another day in the camp?

It seems as though, following our accident a year ago, my husband and I have spent a lot of days waiting for the cloud to move. Yet looking back I see the cloud which overshadowed us did move, but it was according to our Lord's timetable, not ours. Days in the hospital, then with our youngest daughter in Albany, our eldest daughter in Independence, at the end of September our own home in Wilsonville. 

It seems like we're still following the cloud, but I continue to read Exodus.  When Moses lingered at the foot of  the mountain, he heard a voice of his Friend calling.  Come up to me on the mountain, and wait there... Then Moses went up on the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain. [Exodus 24:12, 15 ]  In the cool darkness of the cloud Moses beheld the glory of the Lord and heard His voice.

It is so with us.  Day by day, as we look forward into the hours which rush up before us, we see not clear skies but a cloud.  Then a Voice we know calls softly, "Come up to Me, and be here."  The cloud of the unknown, then becomes for us the over-shadowing wings of the Lord; "I have . . . hid you in the shadow of my hand," [Isaiah 51:16].

We sit under His shadow.  His shadow is greater than our life's shadows.  His presence is real. "With great delight I sat in his shadow and his fruit was sweet to my taste." [Song of Solomon 2:3].   This fruit we first tasted in the dark alone with Him, will be ours to share with others.  "What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs." [Matthew 10:27 NIV]

There is JOY in the shadow, a purpose for the pain.  God never wastes our tears--they are precious to Him.