HOLY HAMMOCK…!

It might sound silly, but it could just be that my hammock has some kind of supernatural healing power. Five minutes suspended in mid air and I feel like a new man.

It’s usually some time in the evening, generally after dinner, when I slip into the hammock at our home. The sun is setting and from my horizontal vantage point I look up to see the branches of our large oak trees swaying in the breeze, the last rays of sunlight dancing on their leaves. In the background I hear the evening birds, usually robins, chirping away as they prepare to nestle in for the night. The cardinals are climbing all over our feeders and filling their bellies one last time before calling it a day. And if the sky is cloudless I watch as plane after plane flies northeastward, heading toward Newfoundland and then on to Europe, with crisscrossing white contrails marking where they’ve passed

My hammock is a beautiful thing, but what makes it so, is not its power to relax. No, it’s my hammock’s uncanny ability to inspire deep thoughts and feelings. It’s really quite amazing. All I have to do is stretch out for a few minutes and I get lost in a kind of reverie of religious reflection which inevitably, and I mean this sincerely, transports me to an Eden-like reconnection with the goodness, greatness and glory of God’s love. Let me say it again, it’s really quite amazing.

Is there something miraculous or mysterious about my “holy” hammock? Nah! It’s just that the quiet time it facilitates enables me to realize what the Bible prescribed for our spiritual health centuries ago, Be still and know that I am God… Psalm 46:10.

So…what is your hammock?

Love and blessings,

David