It is absolutely mind-blowing what God will reveal to us when we have quiet hearts and open eyes to receive His miracles.

 

Friday morning was a beautiful bright day with temperatures in the high 60s at the cabin. I took a peach outside for breakfast and was eating it over the railing, dripping juice and making a mess of myself, when I noticed a hummingbird a few yards to my right at the nectar feeder. I stood very still, not wishing to frighten her, with the peach at my mouth as if I was one of those Vegas street performers you think is a statue until you poke them.

I was a peach-eating statue, chiseled in mid-bite.
 
After a few minutes the hummingbird left the feeder, and helicoptered over to check out my peach. I stood nose-to-beak with her, literally inches from this beautiful bird. Her rotating wings, beating at 50 times a second, whipped the air into an audible bumble bee buzz.
 
Well that doesn't happen every day, I thought to myself, almost incredulous. What a blessing.

Also this weekend a spotted cucumber beetle (beautiful green ladybug with black spots) hitched a ride on me at a rest stop. I didn't notice her until we were back in the car, underway. She sat motionless on my finger all the way to the cabin--more than an hour's drive. When we stopped for gas, she finally moved, letting me know that it was time to part company. I put her in a lovely lush area full of leafy greens and thanked her for trusting me. I thanked God for giving me the blessing.

I say "blessing" because I believe God was at the center of those two encounters. And if that wasn't God, then I surely do not know what is.

That led me to think about the little things. The beautiful miracles that I, so often, have failed to see. How could I apply this myopic view more broadly?

I don't mean the traditional definition of "myopic view," implying a lack of vision, but rather the larger perspective of seeing the smallness, the grain of sand. It takes faith, perseverance, dedication and love for a gardener to see the tiny green sprig poking out of a dead stick, watering it and propping it up with the hope that one day it will be a fruited brown turkey fig tree. It takes faith, perseverance, dedication and love to appreciate the silk web, realizing the energy and artistry and faith required of the spider to weave it and then to wait, for God to provide. It takes faith, perseverance, dedication and love to empathize with the snail, laboriously tracing a head-cold path as he lugs his RV on his back across a mica-flecked stone. It takes faith, perseverance, dedication and respect to understand that the great pool of water-only a drop or two to us-on the shaded leaf where something much smaller than myself, and in many ways, much larger, journeys for a drink. 
 It takes faith, perseverance, dedication and love to see the small things, and seeing the small things is no small thing. 
 
Theodor Geisel understood the macro in the micro--this definition of myopia. His Whos were a complete civilization on a snowflake. The same is true for the myriad worlds under our boot. And it is the cruelest kind of short-sightedness-and perhaps our undoing-to ignore that fact.  

There is much to cherish, and I am still learning. I will take the time to be still, and to appreciate those small miracles that I have too often overlooked. I will take the time to be still, and know that God is God, the great I AM.        
 

 

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