Count Your Blessings #68 – Pleasant Surprises

After a long frustrating day with lots of driving and good dollop of delays – I arrived home 2 hours after I had planned to. It had been one of those days when you don’t just get one delay, you get a wonderful variety of them. Some delays have a point and a meaning, today’s mostly didn’t. The most pointless was a 30 min delay on the M6 because everyone wanted to slow down to look at a car transporter which had turned over – on the other carriageway. I suppose I should be counting my blessings that I wasn’t on the other carriageway, they had a much longer delay ahead of them.

On days like this I like to go out for a walk to clear my head. It doesn’t need to be a long walk just long enough to replace the diesel fumes with something a bit more natural.

I am in wonderfully privileged position of being able to walk a short way and then turn off into some woods and meadows. It’s been raining a lot and the meadow smell fragrant. There was a nice sunset building. I could already feel the frustration starting to lift as I walked along. And then as I looked out of the corner of my eye over towards the little pond, stood quite still looking straight at me was a deer. It stood and it stared, quite still. It wasn’t stressed or tense, it was just looking. it was looking at me and I could almost hear it saying ‘Chill Graham. Let go of the frustration. It’s a beautiful evening’. We both stood there for several minutes until eventually the deer walked off towards the trees and nibbled at the fresh new shoots that were provided there.

What a pleasant surprise. Definitely one of those “should have bought the camera” moments.

I was so excited when I got back that I started to write this blog. Then Sue got back from her evening out and we both went off to see if the deer was still there, but it was off munching fresh new shoots on some other trees.

As the deer pants for streams of water, so I long for you, O God.

I thirst for God, the living God. When can I come and stand before him?

Psalm 42