Thursday (Instead of Friday) Photos - Loneliness

I took the top picture in New Orleans' French Quarter a few months ago. It is near Cafe du Monde. You ever feel like you are on the outside looking in? The second picture is of the Mobile Bay at sunset. I started thinking about the pictures, the past, and the hand of God in my life and the following is what came out. It's a bit different from my normal writing on this blog, but hopefully you'll get what I am saying. It just kind of started flowing and took me someplace that I thought was worth going.

I love the water, especially the Gulf of Mexico and it's bays, inlets, and bayous. For me, there's something most serene about a warm Gulf breeze. It wraps around me and carries me down the oak lined avenues of New Orleans and through the dense pine forests of South Mississippi. It blows gently through the attic of my mind and uncovers picture albums of family gathered whole, before any of those I loved had faded into eternity. It reminds me of setting out in a little boat with my Papaw from the Seabrook Bridge on Lake Ponchatrain as a child, or water skiing down the Jourdan River as a teen. It reminds me of summer nights with friends spent dreaming about where the wind would take us, never realizing that we were, in some ways, closer to paradise at that moment than we would ever realize. The Gulf, so warm and inviting - so endless, brooding, and dangerous when whipped into a fury by heat, plunging pressure, and the hand of God. It rose up and devoured so much that had grown alongside its seedy, sandy shores.

But, the memories of what was come upon me like a warm summer rain rising up from the Gulf to cool the heat of day, and to cool the fury of my loneliness - to remind me of home and family, friends and hopeful days, when the future stretched before me like that tropic water, mysterious and unexplored. That future, now unfolding as the years pass, has been full of joy and pain, storms and satisfaction. I look back and see that a true Light was shining in my darkness and another Wind was carrying me along. I see Him there, even in my lonely dark alleys. Endless, Brooding, Dangerous, yet Gentle, Serene, and Warm. He rushes upon my shore and pulls me into Himself with violence and bedlam ensuing, tearing asunder all the sorry shanty towns of my life. He does it to shake my loneliness as though it could ever hold me when He comes calling.

Comments

[Bob Cleveland]

Beautiful. In my case, it'd be pictures of a kid sitting by Oneida Lake, watching the lights of tugs pulling barges down the New York State Barge Canal, and hearing the sound of distant outboard motors.

[Geoff Baggett]

Alan,

I just walked down that sidewalk a few weeks ago when I was in the Big Easy to serve through Noah Rebuild.

It was quite an experience for this country boy's eyes.

I love the gulf, as well. I visit twice a year with my family. In fact, we were set to rent a house on Dauphin Island the weekend after Katrina hit ... but there wasn't a splinter left. Instead, I brought a team down and we stayed at D.I. Baptist Church while we did mud-out in Pascagoula.

Thanks for the great pics, and for the memories.

Geoff