the rule of sevens

All. week. long. one kid or another has been home with a fever.  My hands are raw and cracking from the constant scrub.  Just yesterday I mixed and drank the very last Emergen-C in the house.  I need to go out for more before whatever immunity I’ve built up subsides.

I’m three weeks in to a Beth Moore study on Revelation.  Less homework each week than her studies on James and Daniel and Esther.  Journaling is a big part of it–documenting how God has chosen to reveal himself to me over the course of the week.  I must not have been paying close enough attention during group because that direction fully went over my head the first week and my journaling went undone.  And then last week it was less a matter of not understanding the direction and more a matter of not taking the time to follow it and again the lines in my book remained empty.

Snow fell steady again yesterday.  It marked the third time in less than two weeks when at least two inches of it blanketed our dusty desert.  Accumulation yesterday was seven inches.  Seven.  When the first flakes blew in I set out to creating what has quickly become a snow day tradition in our house.  Chili was already in the Crock-Pot.  There were just enough dates left for a second batch of sticky toffee pudding.  And then I set about mulling wine with cloves and cinnamon and orange peel.  The recipe handwritten by my mom and only recently rediscovered.  We took our steaming flutes of it to the hot tub and there we alternately sipped it and attempted to catch giant falling snowflakes on our tongues.  Hot and then icy cold.

This is one of those freeze-frame moments, I said, my face turned up, eyes closed.  The heat of the hot tub rose in steam all around while flakes of soft snow big and small dotted and stung and melted quick away.

I’ve always known seven to be God’s number, but not before Revelation did I know why.  It represents perfect completion.

Seven inches.

Freeze-frame.

My journal won’t go empty this week.