rejoice in even the smallest of things!

We have just had our first big snowstorm of the season thus far here in my little town on the prairie. Backbreaking, numbing snow. Huge sigh. I resigned myself to learning to live, not as I did in the city, but as I must do here in the country. That means not complaining when it snows...a lot! and not thinking that within hours of a snowfall, I can drive as if it were a sunny summer day, as they want to do in the city. Instead, I must pace myself....slow...down....and...just...be...in...the...moment.

Did you fall asleep there?

Yesterday I was at a friend's house, a sweet gal who is from the Philippines. She was telling me how cold she was as she bundled up, layer upon layer. I thought hat maybe she was walking to work, but instead,she was driving herself. She just did not like the cold. While she got ready, I looked out her kitchen door. There, for miles as far as I could see, lay the prairie. Nothing but white, if all that was what I had wanted my mind to see. But I took a deep breath and looked again...and saw beauty. A row of corn in the field just beyond her house was left as a windbreak by the farmer for the residents who lived on the street just beyond his field. And I gave thanks for that farmer's reasoning, for if not for that windbreak, there would have been piled a wall of snow in these folks' backyards. I saw a row of trees in the distance. I saw a flock of geese as they flew overhead. I saw traffic on the highway far away....with an open mind, I saw that I was living in God's country.

I have to keep telling myself this as I shovel away many pounds of snowflakes next time it storms...this is God's country. He rules....we cannot stop it, though we can wish it away. As I moved yet another pile of snow and the wind whipped in my face, instead of complaining, I remembered the story of the disciples in the boat and of how they feared the wind...the waves. I learned, as I shoveled that I too have to learn how not to fear the prairie and it's elements, but to find the joy and beauty within what seems like to many to be vast emptiness all around me. Remember, life IS a journey, always remember this...and we need to look around us and take joy where we can find it!!!

It's true of you also, no matter where you are: find joy and beauty in what seems like emptiness. Are you in a job that involves cleaning? Rejoice...you have a job! Do you care for the elderly and feel like you are a nothing? Rejoice! You are showing compassion in a very real way! Are you caring for a family member who is difficult? Rejoice, for you are a very important caregiver to someone who otherwise would have been given up to society or worse, kicked to the curb. Do you grumble because you are sidelined with a headache? Rejoice, because there are those who've just returned from war with missing limbs...or...maybe returned in a casket instead!

Life is truly what you make of it. It can be as bad or as beautiful as what your mind sees. There is a story about two men sharing a hospital room. One man had access to the small window next to him; the other couldn't get out of bed, so asked the first man to look out the window and describe what he saw. Daily he would tell the one who was bedridden about the "garden below, filled with small colorful birds, of blue skies and flowers that grew along the stone fence that bordered this courtyard." And the bedridden man relaxed, for in his mind's eye, he saw beauty. When the man who told him these things was finally discharged, the bedridden man felt depressed. He longed to know once more, "what was outside his window?" What was he missing? So he asked a nurse, "nurse, can you please look out my window, tell me what you see?" She complied and responded: "Sir, there is only a brick wall out there! Ain't nothing worth viewing!" The man argued, "no! You don't understand! The patient who was here next to me, he described so well the beauty outside my window!" The nurse replied, "that man? The man who shared this room with you? He was blind!"

Wow! An "Amazing Grace" moment..."I was blind, but now I see!"
We see only what we want to see....and this particular man had chosen to see beauty from what he knew the world COULD be...not from what it actually was!

Today, look around you and see the beauty...even if it is something so small as a scene from winter. A sparrow alighting on a branch, a child taking the hand of one who leads it...the sound of a giggle. There is joy to be found...may God be with you as you rejoice when you find it...share in that joy and then...pass it along!
May peace be with you today!