On an old stone structure, tangled in vines and weighed down by decaying leaves, I sat with my eldest daughter. We were on a walk in the woods on a sticky summer day. The particular bit of Maryland wilderness in which we found ourselves circumnavigated a small lake, and we’d decided to stop and sit and watch.
We had stepped off the trail and over the rusted remnants of the train tracks to settle ourselves amidst the moss and dirt. There, we looked out through the canopy of green and over the glistening lake to the far side where the light rail occasionally trundled past and a solitary boat floated in stillness.
“What’s that sound?” my daughter asked suddenly.
I gestured to a chipmunk who had made an appearance and was scrambling over a narrow branch. My daughter smiled, nodded and we returned to silence.
“Look there!” she said, pointing to the shadowy head of a turtle slowly rising out of the water. “Another one!” It was true — a second, third, fifth, tenth turtle was climbing its way up the waterlogged roots of one of the tallest trees.
We returned to stillness.
…until an ant crawled up my leg and I batted it aside, frantic. My daughter laughed.
A slow, steady buzz emanated from our left, rising in volume with every moment. The chipmunk departed, but more leaves rustled, signaling the arrival of its companions. Turtles came and turtles went, and the occasional fish swam past. And all the while, the light danced upon the water like a thousand tiny pirouetting lightning bugs.
“The longer you sit in a place, the more it reveals itself to you,” I said. The words felt like forced wisdom thrust into my daughter’s hands, but in reality, those words were more observation than advice.
My daughter said nothing. So, we sat and we watched and we listened and we wondered if the hikers that passed us by even knew we were there at all.
The longer you sit in a place, the more it reveals itself to you.
It’s true, right? Obvious. And yet, we rush past, we keep our heads down, we avoid eye contact. We don’t sit in places for very long — and we sit with people even less. Do we give ourselves the time to sink into a place, to truly see it, to let it unfold before our very eyes?
Do we give our friends, our family, the stranger on the bus that same opportunity?
In that unfolding — whether through our environment or our companions — God makes Godself known. It takes time to truly know a place, a person. It takes time to know ourselves and our God.
And so I wonder, in these final weeks of summer, if we might take the time to simply sit and be in a place, with a person, and let God unfold in God’s own time right there in front of us. What might God be saying through chipmunks and trees and that single, solitary boat? How might God be sharing with us God’s own delight?
And what new insight into God’s glory do we glimpse when that first turtle slowly, slowly crawls into view? How about if we wait for the tenth?
