Invisible Things

When you camp in the tall woods you can hear the rain high in the trees as well as usual patter around you. Even after the rain is over, the top branches are still wet. A gust of wind waves the branches and sets the drops flying, and it sounds like it is raining again, high above you.

In the grasslands waves of color changes show the bending of the grass to the unseen wind, moving here and there and perhaps even reaching you. When the iron filings order in ranks and stand at attention you know there’s a magnetic field there.

The wind or the field is still there whether the trees or wheat or bits of iron are there to greet them or not. These other things don’t make up the invisible reality, they just display it.

Other invisibilities are more closely tied to what they touch. The bird outside my window lives with its wings and its racing heart and lungs—and would not live without them. He may live without this or that—at some point he cannot live anymore.

But there’s more to the life than the physical parts—even giving the parts a good jolt of lightning in an old castle at midnight doesn’t seem to get a dead body working.

Saying vows doesn’t create the invisible reality of a marriage, but doing them does. Not just the shared bed and shared meals, but the lifetime of services large and small that express and embody the love. It includes the risk and adventure of children—accepting and caring for whoever comes along. If any do—that’s in God’s hands.

The marriage is both displayed and fueled by the dozens of daily small things that mean love and reliability. True, you can show courtesy and reliability in day after day at work, but the relationships there are of a different kind—marriage is a special creation with different “bones” than friendship.

We see the signs of the marriage, but we need new eyes to see the thing itself, to know what we’ve made.

29 years isn’t long enough—I pray for many more.