A deer, a turtle, and an armadillo at the side of the path

This was a long hot summer filled to overflowing, not by interruptions or distractions, but marked by...(whoa, a lack of words here), a season of vast relationships and unspoken needs and even urgent ones that often shook me awake in the middle of the night to worry or pray, His glory getting all over everything.

Yes, a summer filled with stuff like that.  Hot, humid, and my cup runneth over.

Last week, I started back to reading, writing, and early morning runs, all of which had been largely neglected like too many old emails in my inbox.  On Monday, I ran early, before the wet wool blanket of humidity declared world domination for the day.

In my quest to look at things from a different perspective, I ran my usual loop backwards, starting from a different parking lot and skirting the gravel path and chain link fence behind the high school.  As I entered the woods, quite suddenly, a six-point buck stood sentry on the side of the path, not a bit afraid or startled by me, but watching me slog past with his huge deer eyes, silent, still and present.  I was running on his turf.  I smiled, as if seeing a glimpse of God who makes Himself known in shockingly ordinary ways and in unexplainable places, the invisible quite suddenly very very real.

Instead of following the dry stream bed, I turned suddenly left and up the hill, not quite into the unknown but that which is just yet to be explored.  A path always seems steeper from the unfamiliar side of things.  I ran suspended in the deep green of the lingering summer pressing around me.  For a few moments, I was disoriented, not knowing where I was on a path I knew so well. How often in life, keep going, you will get through this, and then sudden familiarity, perhaps from just a different direction, as if finding the right word after all.  And the mystery converges with what I knew all along.

Toward the end of my run, I saw a palm-sized turtle creeping alongside me on the trail amidst the leaves and moss and other such distractions, yet another glimpse of the unexpected.  A gallant deer and the barely perceptible disguise of a turtle prodded me to observe the largely unnoticed. How much I miss of life pulsing around me, even in the backdrop of the trees applauding in the breeze.

Wonder means being open, not so possessed about agendas and directions and God opening new doors for us, but being opened up to what is around me, and realizing how ludicrous the idea of doors when I am on a trail in the great outdoors.  God opens my eyes and heart to what I have not seen before, cracking open the day with the spectacular and the graciousness of the ordinary, that which I rarely or barely acknowledge, not invisible or unknown to Him at all.

For by Him all things were created,
in heaven and on earth,
visible and invisible...
And He is before all things,
and in Him all things
                  hold together.

                 Colossians 1. 16-17

God's grand redeeming comes quietly, sometimes deeply below the surface of this mess, through fearful mysteries, even in a bleak wilderness or impossible situation.  Someday we are going to be really surprised. His awe emerges from the chaos, what appears as tangled is interwoven into an intricate and beautiful design--that which was there all along.

The next morning when I ran -- could it get any more humid?  -- on my final descent, I noticed an armadillo laying motionless in the tall grass on the side of the path.  I like to think that he was just taking a snooze.  But what in the world was a dead armadillo doing in a city park in Nashville, of all places?

I had witnessed the majesty of a deer, the humble grace of a turtle, and an unexpected mystery of an armadillo.  I am always a little taken back by the unusual details which God slips into our lives.  His grand wonders are seamlessly woven in the commonplace.  Even in the "what was that about?" mysteries,  like unexpected dead armadillos we come across, whatever form that may take.   Sometimes, I think, these are strategically placed and designed just to get our attention in the all-too-familiar.

What has God prepared for this day?
His faithfulness,
             His divine purposes,
      in every kind of package.
Nothing is wasted.
            All is redeemed.

No eye has seen,
      nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man imagined,
what God has prepared
   for those who love Him...

             1 Corinthians 2. 9-10