I always look to the sky. I think I might have always done that, but now I notice how often I scan the sky, night or day. The first thing I do when I step outside is look up, lift my eyes to things above. We've been blessed to live in homes that give us a good view of the sky. Recessed porches are unintentional features of each of our three places. I guess it might be God's little detail that gathers us altogether on our porches, something He knows we always appreciate. We've often stepped out in the rain, protected to watch trees bend, lightening strike and droplets pelt. We always look up, measure the sky for whatever we're looking for ...sunshine, clouds ...Phoebe.
When she was three she came running in one August summer evening, panting that she'd seen Jesus in the sky. She insisted he was standing above the Boston skyline, a view from our backyard at the time. With each recitation of the story, her siting pared down. As she finished, she clarified, with her three year old lisp, that she had indeed seen Jesus, but just his feet and they were really, really big ...and he was wearing sandles. At that age, her insistent, determined personality was fully developed, and she held to the viewing of Jesus' feet, and proudly told anyone who would listen.
It's rare I look at the sky in August without remembering that story. The August sky is different from July or June. It's bluer and deeper ...it has promise. I've always loved the sky of this month. I remember sitting in the backyard of our first home, just steps from the beach, and pointing to the sky, its blueness, amazed at the difference in just days.
I look up now and find her. I remember that tumbling into the house when she was little, so full of excitement and assurance that Jesus had revealed to her just his feet. I remember listening over and over as the tale whittled down, until it was just right. Because really, isn't it more exciting and poignant to have just a vision of his feet. Lots of people claim to have 'seen' Jesus, but who has been able to focus in solely on his feet.
We used to joke when she was little that her own feet were as capable as her hands. We fought to keep shoes on her. She used her feet, like people use their hands. Even older, she was rarely in shoes if she didn't have to be. The first snow always found her barefoot outside.
I'm sure we could do a whole analysis on Phoebe's viewing of Jesus feet and her own call to be forever barefoot. But really, the story mostly speaks to her keen awareness of His presence in her life at an early age and her ability to communicate His place in it, and how He personally understood that she would be really, really interested in His feet, and so showed them to her.
There's a lot I could write about from here, but really, I want to appreciate the beautiful simplicity of that moment ...and hear her little lispy voice reciting what she'd seen.
Every August, the sky rewrites that memory for me ...helps me find my way to Phoebe every now and then ...when I look up.
