After lunch we decide to take a photo walk through the conservation area next to our property. The walk there is a shadeless section of the old log road that runs by our cabin. It is a messy mix of sticky mud, hard red clay, large rocks, and huge gulleys where the rain has washed it away. The road is difficult to walk on; the gravel shifts and slides under our heavy muck boots.

How I would love to be the eagle soaring peacefully above the harried torrent and worries of the day. How I long for such strength and wisdom. Instead I will probably always be a little awkward swallow, trying to fly too high for my weak little self, flapping furiously and ineffectively against the tumultuous winds of this life.

This morning I watched as city utility employees trimmed trees in front of my house in St. Charles. One man stood in the bucket lift high above the street as the other man guided it up and over electric wires, and between tree branches. It certainly wasn’t a smooth ride for the poor chap in the bucket.

I am surprised to watch the wasp attack the bee, biting him on his fuzzy back with short quick jabs. I want to help the bee. I love bumblebees and their pollination duties are so needed. Plus I am no fan of the hot headed bothersome wasps. But I am barefoot and have nothing to swat with. So I watch and silently root for my bee.

I love night sounds in the country—the croaking tree frogs, whirring crickets, coyotes howling, owls hooting. I love it all! Well I love it all EXCEPT for ONE nightly critter call… those blasted whippoorwills!

That is some blush-worthy mushy stuff, right there! David loved God passionately. He understood that without God, nothing has any value. God is the only treasure worth desiring.

We cannot contain God’s marvelous Creation. It always finds a way to break through, and raise its leafy arms upward toward the sun, in defiant praise of its Creator.

So yes, let’s pray for peace on earth! Here, now, PLEASE! Then let’s start by creating and being the needed peace around us…

God dreams BIG… bigger than our measly 75 or so years we are stuck here in these physical bodies. His plan for us spans not only our tiny time spent here as physical beings on earth, but all of eternity as well.

I’ve been given the gift of quiet. And it is a gift, a rare one in our busy world.