When I head out for a walk, I look for God. I’m like a detective on the lookout for clues. As soon as the rubber of my running shoes hits the black asphalt of the road, I look: amongst the trees -- might newly reddened leaves speak transformation? I peek into the pasture with the young brown colt – might, just might, he take to skipping and speak joy? I do this because I long to be with God and for Him to assure me he cares. In the past, He has come rolling over the horizon to meet me, so I look.
It was late summer on this particular morning. I needed encouragement. Negative thoughts had been badgering me. So, as I walked along the windy, Piney Woods road, I peered into the sky, wondering if God might come in the form of a Mississippi Kite. You see, He has written, as if on stationery, love notes to me in these birds. The Kites typically leave Northeast Texas by early fall, and I hadn’t seen one in a few weeks, so I wondered; and longed. I tell you the truth, one appeared right out of a cloud! He circled and hovered above me. The sleek, gray wings and white, majestic head smiled down on me. I smiled back.
You mustn’t have the idea that I believe God has taken the form of this bird or anything quite so unorthodox. What I do believe is that God harnesses all of creation to speak love.
I walked on down the road, surrounded now by tall pine trees, oaks, and elms, talking and listening to God, pumping my arms, yet finding my hands together over my heart or fingertips to my parted lips, like a young woman in love.
As I neared the little bridge over a tiny spillway of our neighborhood lake, I decided to walk down the dam to where the water runs from the spillway into a creek, which creates a lovely, gurgling waterfall. As I approached, what I saw turned my mood.
No waterfall beckoned. The concrete spillway had run dry. Instead of sparkling water, baked mud covered the cement and the dreaded black algae lay in clumps. This is an ugly, stinky monster-like gunk that has threatened to overrun our lake. The scraps lay there like dead corpses from the war. I grimaced and slumped like a rejected teenager, and said, “Aww, why, Lord? What’s this depressing ugliness?”
I looked up, and there, circling overhead in the brilliant blue sky, was the Mississippi Kite. My stiff body relaxed.
“These coexist, Jamie. Muck and kites. Don’t fear when the drought comes. I will always be with you and my presence will always be Joy -- even in suffering. Keep looking for me.”
Jamie Vanbiber LPC