Advent 2.5

I awoke this morning to fog: the hill across the way is a dark haze behind the thick white air, and the mountains are invisible on the horizon. The world feels quiet, padded all around with cotton or wool. I imagine that I am wrapped in a sky-quilt, here in this apartment silent and still but for the noise of my typing.

I do not understand Montana winter fog. I read that it is 19 degrees outside, ten degrees warmer than it was in the night. In such cold, does snow evaporate because it is homesick for the sky?

I am not homesick for the sky, but perhaps for a new heaven and a new earth, one where love and faithfulness meet together, where righteousness and peace kiss each other. And here is the challenge, for myself and perhaps for you: in light of that homesickness, how am I living? Too often, I feel, I go about in a fog, seeking to distract myself from the horrors of war and global poverty and rampant injustice, and from the closer-to-home sorrows of physical pain and dreams deferred.

This is my challenge for myself today: Do I live in hope, in active hope? Do my habits and projects and words and dreams draw from and manifest this hope? Am I acting, here and now, with the perseverance and joy of one who believes in something better up ahead?