It is December

It is December. December in Cape Town is quite unlike December in any other place. It is summer and sometimes you have hot, sultry summer days, but mostly you have the Cape Doctor, the South Easter, sandblasting your legs and face with the coarse sea sand making it quite uncomfortable to stay on the beach for too long. Even the dainty little shelter canvasses they sell at all the out-and-about stores cannot withstand one gust of the South Easter. Beach umbrellas are the first to go rolling like tumble weed in the desert of Arizona.
But kitewurfers and windsurfers from Italy and France love the wind, of course. They cavort effortlessly above the waves and do stints in the air above the wreck at Dolphin Beach. When they hit a surfer or body boarder they refer to it as a blimp in the road. I've been hit by a windsurfer, once, on my back. The fin gaffed into my back and left a painful afterglow which lasted for weeks.
But today is one of those other kind of days...yesterday too, it started off with mist rolling in from the icy Atlantic on shore and it covers Milnerton first. The mist sneaks into the house like an old house friend and you smell the sea in your lounge. That is one reason why I live here: I love that smell, and I love the mists. Normally it turns out to be a warm day, a windless day if there is early morning mist. But you never can tell with Cape weather: like Sting sings: four seasons in a day!
And then of course one hears the blast of the fog horns from the ships lingering in the bay. Their souns is particularly eerie at night, of course. Like a foreign language being spoken by some prehistoric monsters calling out to each other without knowning where the other one is located.
A fog horn says so many things: hey, I'm over here! Hey, where are you? Mind you don't bump into me unnecessarily! Give me a wide berth! Let's play! Do you like my sound? Is anyone else out there?
Imagine a mist horn symphony!
But it also says, I'm alone out here...it has an attractive, lonesome, scary sound to it, and yet it is merely a mechanical device used to warn other ships of one's whereabouts.
But I love the sound of the fog horn...I lay awake at night to listen to it. It is so different from the hooter of a train or a car. It has depth to it. It is deep calling unto deep. Somewhere deep inside we respond to it without words and reply, i am here, it is ok.
The voice of God deep inside us is often like the old fog horn. It is comforting yet alarming; unexpected and yet desired; vitally necessary and still surprising; deep and yet so clear. It speaks to us when we most need it. It warns when temptation comes. It encourages when energy is low. It heals when there is hurt. It inspires when life overwhelms us.
Ah, the voice of God in the mists of the spirit realm! How we need it! How we long for it! How we ache without it.
May this December not merely be a time to remember, but may we hear the fog horn of the voice of God speaking to us in so many ways that we will enter the New Year with renewed energy, faith and hope. And the greatest of all is love...agape divine love, unconditional love, love so great that pen and poet cannot describe it. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have ever lasting life. Hear that fog horn sound in your own spirit and pass it on to someone else in the mists of time.
It is December...