Much More Waiting to be Birthed

It felt like a wake! In the early hours of this new day, again I stood with Gilfillan, my Brittany pup, on the banks of the Wenatchee River, holding vigil. The Chinook salmon, those liquid shadows in the waters, kept place in the steady flow of the current. And in the pregnant stillness, as voiceless fish waited their time to spawn, much more than a new day and a multitude of tiny fry awaited birth.

The summer run of Chinook, arriving this fall, was predicted to be good. And it has been! "Keeping watch" like the faithful few on Golgotha of old, I have been visiting the river most mornings. Today I saw the first one - the lifeless, soon to be mutilated, body lying in the shallows of the crystal clear waters. Having laid her eggs, her purpose to give life being done, this Chinook salmon was dead, and it was difficult not to feel the weight of this magnificent creature's great sacrifice, her death a gift to us in the generation of fish to come and the nutrients of her body that will fertilize our valley. Life coming through death.

How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given...a Christmas carol?... when creation's Good Friday in the river before me weighs my spirit down? But then followed victory! Relief came in a wondrous affirmation of faith, written boldly across the same heavens in which a star once led wise men to a humble manger centuries ago. For above me a flock of migrating Canada geese winged their "V" boldly across the sky to complete the story being enacted below that "unmerited suffering, willingly endured as the will of God, redeems," or as Aslan explains his death to the children in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, "When a willing victim who has done no wrong is killed in a traitors' stead, the stone table will crack and time itself will turn backwards." Resurrection follows sacrificial death!

So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heaven...the words of the Christmas carol continued in my thoughts as a winging victory disappeared into the morning mist above me. Soon our Christmas town's streets will be filled with the Norman Rockwellian longing for picture postcard living. But the Creator's voice whispers from our rivers just as advent approaches that the Christ child, born to die, comes that all the world might be redeemed.

Truly, in the pregnant stillness, as voiceless fish wait their time to spawn, much more than a new day and a multitude of tiny fry wait to be birthed. I felt God's finger gently pointing at me. And Gilfillan and I turned towards home. Soon the Jerusalem Cross Garden at the church will be buried by snow. But beneath it will lie the spring wheat, enduring it's burial, waiting for Spring and resurrection. How might God be waiting to use what I (we) am willing to sacrifice, or die to, to redeem the world?