I think we have something to learn from a lot of things. Things we take for granted, and don’t think twice about. Things like snowflakes…and hairbrushes…and candles…and glass…and rain…and sugar crystals… And asphalt.
There’s always something to be learned; something heard, something seen. There’s more to life than waking and sleeping and the rush in between. Oh, you of little faith. Don’t you see? You’re standing staring engrossed at a raindrop with your back to the ocean. It’s roaring in your ears…but you won’t hear it. And it’s coming, always coming in. It will knock the feet out from under you at last; it will catch you unready.

Driving home from church, the sky was lavender and rose and a million shades in between, and it gave heart and hope and promise to the darkling world. The old red car hummed companionably over the pavement. It was a darling sensation; more than a car ride. It was carrying us somewhere. Carrying us home. Just a leg on a journey that I can’t remember the beginning of and that stretches on before me still, farther than my eyes can see.
We slowed down at the curve in the road. And when I say curve I mean curve…a complete right angle to the left…around a browning field.
And another couple hundred feet and an angle to the right. Around a browning field.
Suddenly I smiled. “I love that they used to do that—make the roads around the farm land.”
I stopped there, but my thoughts kept going…

More than a bend in a road. It says something. About farmland. About fields. About the way things were. About life.
The field of corn stubble is bland and beautiful in golden-blonde. That autumn color that is at once more and less than dead. A memory of a harvest. And a promise…of plenty.
And the road goes around it. Today if somebody was to build a road, they would stretch that coal-black asphalt right through the heart of that ground. And there’d be no helping it. People need houses. Homes. And that’s a beautiful thing in itself. But in our progress…do we remember? do we stop to think? Or do we take it all for granted…and never think twice.
After all….what is there to the field but old dead stubble? And hard cold earth? And the brown shells of weeds and wildflowers, skirting it around, hemming it in.

What is there to the field, you ask? Life! The very life of life. In this ground was planted a seed.
Here it drank of the rain.
Here it took in the richness, the darkness.
Here it stretched, here grew; reaching out and upward, toward the sun.
Here it triumphed: breaking through the barrier, into the open air.
Here it met the wonder of this higher life, and became a new creation.
Here it soaked up light and water, and breathed deep of the cool clarity of air, and was made strong.
Here it moved, slowly and steadily, toward the sun.
Here it was fulfilled—here died, to bear fruit.
And we have lived a little better, somehow, for its life. And we took it for granted, never thinking twice.

But the road still bends around the field. If we don’t, at least it knows.
Here is more.
Here is something to make the rocks sing.
Here is life.
Here is holy ground.

Not holy because of itself, because of what it has or what it is. Holy because the Hands that formed it are holy hands. Because the life it bears is an echo of the Life that makes the beating in your human heart. Because everything created is a reflection of everything deeper, everything finite of infinity, everything ordinary of something eons greater than our wildest dreams.
And we are living better for this life. Because the same Life that breathed it breathed us. And the same Love that desires for us everything great and good gave us these things…simple things…to stir out hearts, to whisper of Home, to help us live.

And do we think twice…?