This morning I almost decided NOT to go on the long Sunday morning walk around Creve Coeur Lake that has recently become my habit. It was gray, dreary and a bit cold after raining much of the night, although it wasn’t raining at the moment as I stared out of my bedroom window at the deck and the yard and the woods beyond. What the heck, I finally thought, the worst that could happen is that I’ll get a little wet. I got dressed and drove the quick few miles to the park.
My soundtrack for much of the walk was Rich Mullins’ wonderful and eclectic “A Liturgy, a Legacy and a Ragamuffin Band” album, which begins with the late-Mullins mumbling into the studio microphone: “Bear with me everybody, I’m barely ready to do this…” I felt sort of the same. But let’s move on, I thought.
The first part of the walk was as dull as the steel-gray lake surface reflecting the cloudy and overcast sky above. “Just keep your head down and walk,” I thought to myself, “it’s good exercise, but not so much about the view today.” I circled my way through the woods along the back stretch, walked the length that runs under the highway overpass and finally came to the long homestretch about three-quarters of the way around the approximately 4-mile loop.
About that time, Mullins’ “The Color Green” came in through my ear buds. It is perhaps my favorite song for walking through nature and includes these picture-painting lyrics:
Be praised for all Your tenderness by these works of Your hands,
Suns that rise and rains that fall to bless and bring to life Your land.
Look down upon this winter wheat and be glad that You have made
Blue for the sky and the color green that fills these fields with praise.
No blue sky today, I thought. But then I looked, perhaps for the first time that day, at the green. The green of the grass and the trees exploded into my vision and I was taken aback by the utter beauty and contrast of the wet green against the coldness of the rest of the landscape. I woke up, it seems. It’s not drab, I thought, it’s just God telling me to remember that beauty lies all around us, all the time, if we’ll only wake up and pay attention.
And then, as if on cue from the great director in the sky (and I kid you not nor do I exaggerate the perfect timing on this), there was a flash of brown and white in the corner of my right eye. I turned my head just in time to see a bald eagle gliding to rest on a tree branch not 50 feet in front of me, clutching in its talons two (two!) approximately two-pound fish, obviously and recently pilfered from the lake. My hand went to my chest. I could not move. Seriously, God?
“Seriously, Steve. This is what I do, day in and day out.”
Ask yourself in silence: When was the last time you were totally caught off guard by the wonder and power of God?
Note: As I was writing this, I searched online for the lyrics to the song to double check them, and while I was there ran across this video of Rich Mullins singing the song while walking through a drab, gray Irish landscape, with contrasting scenes in black and white and vibrant color. Great minds and all that. Enjoy the video by clicking on the highlighted text above.
