Gnat-ural Beauty

By Anne Meyer

Have you ever walked into a cloud of gnats? Like where you hold your breath for fear of sucking one in and flail your arms in futility while the gnats seem wholly unaware of your presence?

That’s what came to mind when I read the devotion for Day 4 of the Come, Holy Spirit book. That devotion was all about the Creator Spirit ruling over both chaos and order. A swirling cloud of gnats is full of chaos!

But then have you ever honed in on ONE gnat in the cloud and tracked its flight pattern? We did this once on a nature walk and what we observed was pretty incredible. Each gnat dives down to the bottom of the cloud and twirls its way back to the top just to repeat the pattern over and over.

It turns out that what appears as collective chaos is actually just a collection of organized patterns. We would never have recognized or appreciated the beauty and order of a gnat cloud unless we had taken the time to focus on one small gnat.

I have a lot of “gnat clouds” in my life right now, and lately I’ve done a whole lot of holding my breath and flailing my arms in futility. I think I need to pause and ask the Spirit to help me see the beauty of each “gnat” (some of those gnats are my four beautiful children ).

Maybe then I can be inspired by the God-given beauty and order in the chaos around me. This gives me much to ponder this week!

The prayer for Day 4 goes like this:

Come, Holy Spirit, creator of all things!
Take in hand the chaos of my hectic week
and order my days after the Father’s will.
Hover over today’s needs and desires;
be present in my thinking, feeling, and speaking.

Bring peace to my turmoil, trust to my uncertainty,
energy to my work, and inspiration to my routine.
Use your creative power to harness both the chaos
and the order of my life. Then craft the beautiful life
of Jesus in me. Amen.