wind and the unnatural order of man

This is a photo taken on Monday morning of the roasting room at Harvest Hands/Humphreys Street Coffee Company. In it you can see the roaster (left), the orange buckets holding just roasted coffee, the green buckets holding green coffee, and the youth space through the door. What you can't see is the broken AC not supplying the Harvest House with cool air and the open window doing the opposite.

As I sat roasting I could feel the breeze come through the roasting room, clearing out the stuffiness. Sitting there it, literally, was a breath of fresh air. But the wind also had another effect. The papers on the cork board to the right of the door started blowing, the roast profiles in the orange buckets went everywhere, and the order of the roasting room was put in jeopardy. I closed, almost all the way, the window. It was still cracked so I had the benefit of fresh air, but shut enough to not cause the papers of my life to be blown about.

After shutting out the unbridled wind of that Monday morning I started thinking about what I had actually done. In "That Hideous Strength," the third book of the Space Trilogy by C.S. Lewis, one of the characters remarks that we are taught to dislike weather. "Just look at dogs and children," he says. When the rain comes down and the snow falls they are out in it. But adults only think that the precipitation is ruining their plans, their life. This same thing was happening with this wind. My life was being tossed in the natural order of things, and couldn't stand up to it. But isn't there a passage in the Bible that says "think of the lilies of the field, how they toil not. Yet even in all of his glory not even Solomon was not arrayed as one of these" (Sorry for the King James-ish translation, that's how I memorized it for AWANA). When the wind is taken in its natural habitat it is a wonderful thing. Even given when that wind is more dangerous, like the tornadoes that came through Nashville later that day, they don't cause the same heartache when they get in the way of our lives.

I don't say all of this to suggest we live a simple life in the Rocky Mountains, though if anyone is interested in trying I'm there. I say it to suggest that we try to get out in the world that God created more, with the people God put in it. There is a natural order to things and it would be a shame if we never had the opportunity to see it unspoiled. But it would also be a shame if we didn't get to see it next to the very image of God.

Get outside and get yourself a breath of fresh air.

Or just open a window.

But don't expect your papers stay in the same place, and don't expect your life to be the same.

As Bilbo said, "it's a dangerous business going out your door."

Luke
luketlancaster@gmail.com