I thank God today for the ability to see.
I was out running this morning through the woods, down a path that meandered a course along a local stream. The landscape was whipped from yesterday’s endless winds, but the morning was winning back its beauty as everything relaxed back into its slow, more regular reach for the skies. The stream was full and coursing along in the places it falls, in others just pacing as the terrain allowed. Suddenly a huge span of wings filled the waters’ surface as a giant heron slowed ascended just above the trickling below to escape any possible danger from me. It flew slowly and silently, hovering over the middle of the stream, as if anticipating to someday hang in perfect balance in the capture of some professional photographers' gallery. As it flew out of sight, I murmured ‘Thank You’ to God for the ability to see such a thing.
I came around another bend in the trail and the picture before simply repeated itself again down yet another stretch of the winding watery path. I thought knowing such a thing happens whether I am the one to see it or not deepens a sense of something within me. My seeing also led to my knowing something, something bigger than my routine sense of things, something I had not quite yet known before. I felt like a student in one of God’s many schools, this time the session being held in the natural classroom that He made.
A third time I came upon the great bird, now just standing still in the middle of the creek. He watching me this time, poised but perhaps more tolerant of my presence because I had presented him no danger up until now. I ran by with not one movement on his part, except for the slow darting of his eye to retain his sense of knowing something. What a dance this had become between me and the natural world.
What a gift my eye-sight was to a deeper knowledge, that I fit in a much larger order of the things of God.
I thanked God again for allowing me to 'see'.
