Renew Normal

As I write this, I look out my office window to a grey, dreary, rainy morning. It is late May. The last rain for the season should have been behind us by now. Instead of sunny skies and warm air, I’m wearing a sweater and wishing I had remembered an umbrella.

Life is sometimes like that. We get our hopes up for brighter days, but the rain keeps coming.

Sometimes life itself feels dreary and drab – like we’re on a perpetual subway far beneath the ground, way below those places where life is actually happening. We’re just moving along, perhaps without thinking about it, adopting our surroundings, our pace, our limited scenery, our moving from here to there as “normal.” We look around and see everybody else doing the same, and it confirms our conclusion that our subway-ride life is to be accepted and continually anticipated as simply “the way it is.”

The Bible even starts this way. In the beginning, the earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters. Dark, dreary, and drab. That was normal.

But it didn’t stay that way.

The reason it didn’t stay dark, dreary and drab was because in the beginning, God was there. In the midst of the darkness, the Spirit of God was hovering. Because of the creative presence of God, that dreary beginning exploded into new life where light, color, plants, flowers, animals, sea life, birds, and humanity all came to life. God did that with the dreary and drab. The hovering Spirit of God changed everything. Normal got a new definition.

The Spirit of God always does that. Being the God of redemption and restoration we know of in the Bible, the Spirit is always at work creating and recreating where the drab and dreary are found.

The Spirit of God whispered to Noah that a flood was coming that would destroy all that was drab and dreary, but that life could go on if he would take heed and trust God’s leadership. A new normal was possible.

The Spirit whispered to Abram to leave the drab and dreary hopeless normalcy to begin a new chapter for humanity marked by life and blessing instead of fear and curse. A new day and a new normal.

The Spirit whispered and wrestled with Jacob, drawing him away from the “normal” patterns of life that had hurt him severely. In contrast, the life God had for him was one teeming with life and hope. A new normal.

The Spirit led Joseph to become Egypt’s second-in-command, which served to rescue Israel and countless others from the drab and dreary peril of famine. A new normal.

The Spirit led Moses, generations later, to lead the people of Israel out of drab and dreary slavery, all the way to the Promised Land. A new normal.

The Spirit whispered to Elijah when all he could see was drab and dreary political terror. The news? He wasn’t as alone as he thought. There was real hope because the Spirit was at work. A new normal.

Ezekiel was given a vision from God about what the Spirit wanted to do with everybody stuck in the death-grip of the drab and dreary. Just as in the beginning, God wants to create life in full color where grey, lifeless death has taken root. A new normal for any who would embrace it.

Jesus entered the scene, proving in word and deed that he was God walking around, and limited only by his flesh. He taught “life” in a whole new way. And he promised that when he went back home, he would leave his – God’s – Spirit with us, in us, so that the creative, redemptive work would continue to give us a new normal throughout our lives. The very day of his resurrection, he breathed on his disciples the breath of God – the Spirit – and they received what he promised (John 20:19-23).

Since then, beginning with those first few who sought to Go Be Jesus, the Spirit has been at work doing amazing large-scale works of restoration and incredibly subtle acts of redemption. For those who breathe the Breath, a new normal ensues.

I think we need to renew normal.

The Spirit of God is blowing as strong as ever; with power enough to help us live beyond the drab and dreary subway existence so common, so normal. The Breath is still coming to us from God to fill our lungs and life with vitality. An ancient, eternal work of God which defined normal in the beginning, ready to be adopted anew for those willing to see, hear, feel, taste, and heed the call to renew normal. Individually. As community.

May you, therefore, wake up from your respective level of slumber to the dawn of a new normal for your very life. May you choose full life with God in living color instead of simply passing time through the drab and dreary. May you do this by turning your attention toward God, asking for Breath, and choosing to breathe.