Look down

 In an effort to cultivate gratitude, I have been making a conscious effort to see and appreciate the little things more than ever. There is holiness in the everyday and I am looking for it. I spent a little time outside on Saturday afternoon and I remembered that to see the miraculous in nature, we often have to bend down and look closely. It is there in the tender buds of the Crepe Myrtle. In the first yellow trumpet of a Carolina Jessamine. The tightly furled fingers of a fern waiting for the right time to unfurl and stretch long and wide. The miraculous is there in the Redbuds that blossom right on time. Their time, not mine. And isn't that the real truth here? There are miracles all around us but we miss them if we expect them only in our time and when we forget to look down. F.B. Meyer speaks this truth:

“I used to think that God's gifts were on shelves one above the other and that the taller we grew in Christian character, the more easily we should reach them. I find now that God's gifts are on shelves one beneath the other and that is not a question of growing taller, but of stooping lower and that we have to go down, always down to get His best gifts.”