It was dark. Well, darker. The lights illuminated the slopes for us to enjoy the night. A gentle snow fell and the all was silent. Still, except for skis carving snow. A friend once said skiing is the closest thing to flying. Truly flying without the aid of massive machinery and high tech suits. Pure. She was right. In that one moment, that one night, I flew and felt God in the hills. For that one moment, He and I were transcendent. His hand reached out of Heaven’s realm into Earth’s, and Earth’s into Heaven. If I could tell you how incredibly real it was...
Time passed more slowly. The carving came in pulses with each turn. Like a steady heartbeat or breath. Tiny pellets of snow tapped against my goggles and stung my face. There was no breeze. No one else beside me. The snow fell in a vortex, spinning round and round, drowning out the noise of lights like a hundred freighters near a dark horizon. He was the snow. The silence. The atmosphere. A steady voice saying I'm here. My heartbeat.
I broke out of that moment and stopped, letting myself slip onto my side, a cloud of white kicking up from my fall. I laid there breathing. Just breathing. Silence blanketed me as I stared up into the snowy sky. Another skier passed, asked if I was okay. I gave them the thumbs up. I wasn’t broken, but I felt broken. My bones rattled and my spirit trembled. A wall came down somewhere, crumbling and roaring, revealing something bright in my own darkness.
I tried again and again to feel Him, rushing to the lift, anxiously awaiting my drop from the top. It never returned, and it hasn’t since. Moments of transcendence don’t need repetition, though. They're reminders. He reveals Himself in different ways, gives us a taste of his love, light, and presence in the best way we can understand it. For me it was that moment, and I can remind myself that He's ever present outside those moments, as well, no matter how mundane or dark they seem. Now that moment sits in a golden chest hidden in the corridor of cherished memories. Now I wait for the day every day is a landslide of those moments with my King. It’s just one reason I sit and quietly whisper, come quickly, Lord, come quickly.
