Ice Storm by Candace Echols
My younger brother is sitting directly across the table from me tap-tap-tapping the keys on his laptop as I bang-bang-bang the keys on my own. Ice storm Landon (incidentally, also my brother’s name) has sucker-punched our city. Both his family and mine are left without electricity. Temps are below freezing and I can hear saws buzzing as people try to clear fallen trees so that cars can pass on the streets nearby. My parents have electricity but neither my brother’s family nor my family does. So here we are, 11 people and two dogs, all living under one smallish roof for the sake of precious heat.
As I awoke yesterday—our first day without power, so we were still at home—I was greeted by the song of a bird. He moved from the tree just west of our bedroom to the one just south, and then back again. There was a rhythm to the way this bird tweeted. Same song, second verse, then third, and so on. I felt sorry for the little fella out there in the cold like that. Did he not get the memo? Birds fly south for the winter and my guess is they go further south than this.
My phone dinged and that bird might as well have gone poof.
Duty called in the form of emails that needed to be answered or deleted and a mom-text-string that had way too many thumbs-ups, so I quickly moved on to the next thing. The bird flew off, and so did that moment’s offer for me to engage with God’s good creation. Later in the day, in addition to the loss of our heat, we lost our cell service, too. While my family sat by the fireplace awaiting the Light, Gas, and Water crews, I noticed the song of another bird. All of this outdoor singing sparked a flashback from the start of the pandemic. I remember saying ”Where are all the birds coming from? I normally don’t really notice birds singing, but now, it seems as though they are loud and they are everywhere!” And it wasn’t just me. I remember reading articles about the birds creating all of this previously unnoticed beauty with their harmonies.
The common thread of birdsong running through the pandemic and the ice storm is pointing me to this: when all of my creature comforts are withdrawn and they hold no promise of powering up, the stunning beauty of God’s creation calls out to me in ways that I just can’t miss.
Romans 1:20 tells us, “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” Those last two words—without excuse—are haunting for those who don’t know Jesus. But is it possible that, even as a believer in Christ, I am allowing my screens to become an excuse for a mediocre walk with him? Could my utilities be a buffer that keeps me from thinking more about my Maker than I do? After all, they beckon me indoors where I live at a perfect 70 degrees 12 months a year. My own knee-jerk soul reaction to that sentence is, “My phone I will give you, but don’t touch my heat!” And that’s understandable.
It is possible, however, that the creature comforts I not only enjoy, but have come to rely upon might be reasons why I am not connecting with God in one of the ways he has offered himself to me: through his good creation. God designed the natural world to point to him and to be a canvas on which he displays the beauty of his creative glory. It only makes sense that we would be drawn closer to him when we engage with his handiwork. Conversely, it makes just as much sense that we would feel a soul dullness that contributes to lack of faith when we remain inside surrounded by screens. Our world becomes smaller, noisier, and far less glorious. As a matter of fact, Job 12:7-10 tells us that creation itself knows where it came from: “But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish in the sea inform you. Which of all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind (italics mine).”
The birds outside the window panes aren’t the only things God created. He created me and each and every breath I take comes from his hands. His creation is active and flowing through me every moment of the day. The difference between admiring the birdsong and acknowledging that my breaths are from God is the same as the difference between admiring a chalk painting and jumping into it, like Mary Poppins does. The deep breath I exhaled just before the little footsteps came running around the corner this morning came from God. All of the two-breaths-in/two-breaths-out I take as I jog are his, too. The short shallow breaths I ignore as I lean into my computer—God gives me those. The cold breath I puffed to try to warm my hands two nights ago as our power failed—that was God’s gift again! God’s creative design not only lives around us for our observation, it flows through us so we will not be able to deny his role as our Creator.
When was the last time I thought about my breath—or the birds—or nature as the backdrop of my life?
It’s been a while. It’s only because this computer is running on battery that I’m writing anything about it now. But through the permeating silence that comes from a lack of creature comforts, I find I’m able to more clearly experience God’s grand story and my little spot in it. Low and behold, it is full of surprise gifts like a lower stress level and an ability to trust him for things that are out of my control. There’s no mirage that I have any control over falling branches and downed power lines. While freezing during a technological disconnect is not the path I would choose for this weekend, my utter lack of ability to change it helps me to assume a “palms up” posture that easily and readily admits my Father is the one in charge. The birds already have that down.
And my hunch is, that’s where their song comes from.
Candace and her husband Jim enjoy raising their five children in the southern US. She has written articles for several publications and a children's book about how God comforts us in times of loneliness through puppies. Candace would live at the beach from January to September, if given the option, which means Ice Storm Landon really isn't her favorite thing.