This is a journal entry written on the first night of Loi Krathong, Thailand’s floating lantern festival.
Saturday, November 16th, 2013
I can’t help but wander into praise. I’m on top of our roof in Chiang Mai and dang. Hello, lanterns.
The sky is alive right now. These lanterns are kind of a beautiful picture of who we are as believers. The Lord ignites us. Cool. Once lit, it takes a little while to fire up enough smoke to rise. We wait. He lets us go. We slowly rise. Although it was He who let us go from below, He’s also waiting for us to rise up to Him.
It’s beautiful to see one lantern rise. Really. It’s exciting. We watch it glow and float and fulfill its ultimate purpose as a lantern. It’s beautiful. But. It doesn’t compare to when there’s a flock of them. A peaceful army. A tribe. A family of lanterns rising together.
They make one another more beautiful. They light up the sky. People gasp. People think. People change when they see this sight. This sight creates life. It provokes wonder. This sight opens hearts, minds and souls.
This is what lanterns were created for: to be lit up, sent off and lifted up together, bringing beauty and glory to what’s above. It’s a beautiful sight when a lantern lets the smoke raise it and the wind lead it. It doesn’t struggle to go a certain way or to try and be close to other lanterns. It knows. It knows and rests and relies on the beautiful fact that it was created to go upward. A constant, effortless, awe-inspiring journey of releasing itself to its greatest purpose – to reunite with the hands that ignited it in the first place.
Lord, I want to be this lantern. I don’t want to struggle with where I’m going. I desire to let You lead me – independent of other lanterns, but surrounded by them and dancing around the ones you’ve lifted me toward.
May I never crave what’s below. May I obediently float. Yes – what’s above is beautiful and desirable and healthy – but Your timing is what makes the ascent worthy of praise and wonder. It’s all in the effortless, easy float. Let all comparison be forgotten, upstaged by harmonious unity of the rise.
Yes & amen.
