Surprises of all shapes and sizes…

The sweetest wonders in life are the ones that pop up when we least expect them.  Like our first time out in our sailboat as a family (a few years back).  We’d barely gotten out of harbor when a pair of dolphins swam up to play in the water breaking at our bow and leap and sport at our side.  It was breath-taking and utterly took us by surprise!  In all the times sailing since, such an event has never happened again. Only on that maiden voyage.

So you can imagine our delight and surprise when we took our land-lubbing visitors out this past weekend for a quick run to our favorite islands… and moments out of port, Jim points ahead to starboard at fins approaching.  And soon we are ring-side audience to a trio of Orca whales sporting their dashing black and white suits as they swim toward us rising and submerging rhythmically, to pass at our side, migrating down the inlet.  Never before have we seen them.  Why this moment when we have never-before visitors to our little paradise?!  Could it be that just as we love to surprise our kids with good things,  our Father so delights to surprise His children? 





A purple starfish can be just as wonder-filled if you have never seen one…

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I had a quiet little ‘sit’ surveying my ‘kingdom’ one deflated day after the excitement of company had come and gone…



It was therapeutic to look around me and notice with wonder all the tiny beautiful things with which my world is studded…



As Robert Louis Stevenson said:

“The world is so full of a number of things,
I ’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.”







And though the seasons are ever changing, there is a comfort in the return of familiar flowers, and the reminder of summers past when I have walked on these slopes and heard a still small voice whisper—just at the time of the tiger lilies blooming…

Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? Is.43:19

And when God says a sparrow does not fall to the ground without His notice, does that not mean that He notices the moments when I need a reminder of His watchful love?  And the heady perfume of wild roses slows my steps…



… and I see each rose to be an assembly of delicately shaped hearts.



And mine is lifted.

I smile to see this curious little fuzzball—there are surprises everywhere when I slow to notice!



I am grateful.

“Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe” (Heb.12:28)


--LS