The clouds roll like tumbleweed over the Saint Lawrence, gathering their supply before heading back over the mountains to our right. It is grey everywhere recently, not like Summer or Autumn around here, where everything is lit with color. We grow accustomed to the sameness of Winter and Spring; even the daffodils and small violets are a minute shock to our existence. Which of these things doesn't belong?

I have made a Caricature God. What's yours?

Mine is a God of sameness. When I was small the parishioners would sing in four-part harmony "Great is Thy faithfulness, there is no shadow of turning with Thee, Thou changest not.." and you know the rest. I envisioned a God who had a lethargy any five year old would disdane. I did. Mine is a God of deceptive bordem, a continual plod toward a New Heaven and New Earth. This is no journeyman with a wunderlust for life, this is no rigid taskmaster with a end goal in sight, this is a God who marks tallies on a cave wall: Day 263. Day 8754. Day 24,788.

Mine is a God who has been seated on a throne for more days than I understand and whose beard has grown past his knees and who has grown accustomed to my mistakes and missteps. He nods from that great throne and glances at the calendar to see if it's almost time to just bring us all home where we belong.

I wake every morning to deceptive sameness. This week is full of grey spring rain, enough to make the grass turn a brilliant green and to break the icy winter dams that have held back the rushing and wild water. And maybe it's the rain that makes me think that every day changest not, but more perhaps it's the daily grind of life. The same coffee maker churning out the same cup of coffee keeping me awake through the same morning to do the same things to go the same places. Ad nauseum.

And I wonder today, how He does it? This Caricature God of mine. How does he remain faithful? How does his changelessness and faithfulness defy the impressions of a five year-old and this twenty-something year old? He says Faithful, I say Boring. He says Unchangeable, I say New Toy Please. The book of Hebrews says:

In the same way God, desiring even more to show to the heirs of the promise the unchangeableness of His purpose, interposed with an oath,so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge would have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us.

Right about now I need some strong encouragement. Not that I'm faltering or failing or hopelessly flailing around, but just because His unchangeableness seems a little grey right now, a little too constant, a little too familiar. I'm asking for something that doesn't belong to jolt me wide awake and put some color into my world. I'm asking for a fresh impression of God.