Dear friends,

Maybe it’s payback for the slow days of the pandemic. Maybe it’s my particular season of life or work. But wow do the days feel full.

Yesterday, I felt overwhelmed and walked a grassy path behind my office that leads to a creek. Getting all the way to the creek involves crossing a patch of overgrowth. Virginia has ticks and I had shorts. So I nearly turned around. Isn’t it enough to see and hear the creek from a distance?

Not if the creek is to do its work on the heart.

So I walked through the weeds — why did that seem so much harder in my mind? — and shimmied down the bank to stand on the rocks where the water flowed by. It was only when I saw the little fish that the words of the 23^rd Psalm bubbled up in me: You lead me beside waters of rest. 

This morning, I visited the creek again for a few minutes before turning to the day’s tasks. My workload hasn’t changed, but I don’t feel as overwhelmed and find it easier to stay present to God as I work. 

Most of our lives don’t allow for hours of daily prayer and solitude. But sometimes all that’s needed is to take our body somewhere for a few minutes and push past weeds of inconvenience to skip a stone in a creek that will outlive us. There we might recover — without force or strain — the knowledge of God’s care that can strengthen us to do what needs to be done.