Thank you, Lord!
As I was driving home this morning after dropping my child off at school, I decided to take the back back roads. It adds several minutes to the trek, but I'd already put in several hours of work for the day, so I had more than enough time to spare. As I was entering the most remote part of the drive the normal sense of comfort and solitude enveloped me. At first that's all it was; just that feeling I get when I'm on a winding dirt road in the middle of nowhere. Seeing barbed wire barely hanging from rusty t-posts and propping up hedge posts whose bases were eaten with time and the freezing and thawing of snow. Old fences whose rustiest strands may have contained animals which nourished me in utero. Fences which are losing the battle to contain the imperceptible yet relentless march of buffalo grass across the plains. Seeing the leathery green juniper bushes implacably carving out their homes in slow motion against the will of the rocky hillocks on which they dwell.
Then I noticed the feeling was more than a feeling, Lord. I realized it was you. You brought my family here in part because I needed this. I needed the healing balm of the countryside you raised me in. This isn't full circle, but I'm certainly spiraling into familiar, comfortable, healing territory. That feeling is Your embrace, Lord. That feeling is my soul reacting to this gift which is so precious to me. You know I used to escape to the countryside when I was young, away from my anxieties. You used the countryside then to soothe me, and now you're using it to heal me, but more importantly to show yourself to me. Billions of years ago you set into motion everything necessary to provide this heaven on earth as a gift, that I might know you. Heavenly as it is, it points to a greater heaven. It points to You, Lord. As magnificent and as vast as this is for me, this is but a hint of you. This is you plucking a tiny blossom then holding up the world to me. You made this for me. That I could see you. You love me so much that this is for me. Not only for me, but for me in my own special way only you could have foreseen.
All aided by the fact that I'm extremely tired. But I think this is all still real and good. I think sometimes we need to be a little worn down so we can stop thinking, and start observing.
Thank you, Lord. I don't know you, but I'm getting to know you. Amen.