Bowing to 2020 - October and November

Three photos for October and November that very much feel like a progression of how so many things grew from a small spark into that which felt overwhelming in scope, to a quiet moment on a pivotal day looking for the presence of God, to finally a moment where I felt the Spirit speak through a stop sign.  

October and November felt to me like the most overwhelming months of 2020.  The pervasiveness of the pandemic, the election, the intensity of emotions and perspectives, the...all of it.  We took our one trip in October to see my parents in Colorado and while there we saw the spread of wildfires there including this one that I wrote about here. This went from a tiny plume of smoke to that which filled the northern sky.  In James 3:1-12, it speaks of the power of what we say and how a single spark can ignite something like what we see below.  This is some of why I think these months felt as they did - the ground was so dry for so many of us, the winds were blowing strongly, and a lot of fires were ignited.  

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 shares of how there is a season for everything but the last two photos reflect part of verse 7 - a time to keep silence and a time to speak.  As we got to November, I felt a leading to move toward more silence than speaking, more looking for what was already present rather than trying to create and push.  There was finding the cross in the shadows of a darkened room as I took a break on election night while working polls and praying for God’s working through whatever results came that night.  I saw how the cross was not just in one small part of the room but stretched across it, right up to where I stood with my camera.  I still vividly remember standing outside this room taking in this scene feeling a release and feeling a sense of trust that God’s got all this covered no matter what.  

And finally a message to simply stop.  In an image that looks like it was taken at night when in fact it was as the morning sun was rising and the early light was illuminating the sign such that it tricked my camera into this exposure.  But maybe the bowing to 2020 at this point is that even when things may look like the light is fading, the reality might be far different as we look closer, as we bow to what we have experienced, and we listen to the movement of the Spirit.