Beyond Frozen
I hope you aren’t getting tired of hearing stories from New Harmony. I just learned so many lessons there this time.
When we first arrived on New Years’ Eve, we took a driving tour instead of our usual walking tour. At 22 degrees, it was just too cold. Some of the scenes we saw around town were:
- Early split-log structures, used in the earliest days of the settlement.
- The community oven.
- A Harmonist dwelling, c. 1820.
- The Opera House, which was once a Harmonist dormitory.
- The “modern” downtown.
When we got near the Inn, I noticed a swan in the pond out back. The next morning I took a walk to take some pictures of it. As I got nearer, I wondered if I had really seen a swan the day before or if this was simply one of the many sculptures around New Harmony. Finally, the blob of white moved and I knew that it was indeed alive.
The swan was completely surrounded by frozen water. During my walk, it never moved from its spot. It preened its feathers and craned its neck this way and that, but it never left its spot in the frozen pond.
Sometimes we are like the swan. We preen. We look this way and that. Perhaps we think and dream and plan and wish, but we stay in one spot. Let’s move this year. We don’t want to be frozen in one spot.
Brethren, I do not regard myself
as having laid hold of it yet;
but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind
and reaching forward to what lies ahead,
I press on toward the goal for the prize
of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 3:13-15