I found myself running the stop sign run at my parents’ house this weekend. It’s uphill to the end of their street where a stop sign sits at the crossroads to the main road. As I tried to convince my legs and lungs that I had done this run many, many times before, I remembered the summers I spent training for field hockey fighting the same grueling incline, but this was different because instead of worrying about increasing my speed or pace, I was just worried about making it to the stop sign and still being able to breath. As I was running my thoughts weren’t preoccupied with homework and papers, but was busy working on Sunday’s sermon and an ordination homily.
I was overwhelmed by the familiar sounds of crickets, of horse tails swishing, of the leaves rustling, sounds that are hard to find in my busy life. I watched one yellow leaf fall to the ground and heard the wind and watching Fall slowly creep in, one leaf at time. I neared the middle of the path where the woods hid houses, I remembered to watch my feet for critters crawling across the path to the other side of wooded sanctuary. I sidestepped as a millipede crawled by.
As my feet hit the ground, I knew that this is what life is: it’s the seconds and minutes that we often run through not noticing anything or anyone around us until we come to those stop signs. The ones that stop us in our tracks, make us gasp for breath because they remind us of how fleeting life is. Those are the moments that stop our busy minds and feet, but once we are stilled, we don’t know where we are. And in those moments of grief, of uncertainity, of wondering what life is all about, we often ask where is God?
God is with us and among us in the swishing of horse tails, in a single, yellow falling leaf, in a crawling millipede, if we but open our eyes to see.