Stirrings of the Waters*
(thoughts, observations, hopes, and/or movements of the Spirit)
A man was begging, sitting in a park, when someone stopped in front of him. Being blind, he couldn’t see who had approached – but could hear him – and he turned toward the newcomer and raised his sign which asked for help. “How’s it going today?” the stranger asked. The man shook his paper coffee cup which rattled with only a few coins in it. “Let me write something on your sign,” he offered, and the blind man agreed.
That evening the stranger was passing back through the park and stopped in front of the man. “How was the rest of your day?”
He showed the stranger the cup full of coins and bills. “It was amazing! What did you write on my sign?”
The stranger hesitated, “Not much, just, ‘Today is a beautiful spring day, and I am blind.’”
The man sighed quietly. “Thank you.”
We have returned to spring, and it is beautiful . . . and today: warm. So this is your reminder to stop and enjoy it. I’m not guaranteeing a cup full of cash; rather, I’m offering to heal your blindness so that you can see. A bit odd, isn’t it, that the cure to blindness is being tripped. We each suffer a bit of spiritual blindness on occasion, and as if an answer to prayer, a saint comes along to trip us up, to wake us up, to get us to look up. And we see.
Beauty isn’t the only thing to see. The opportunity for gratitude is also to be seen. The German theologian and mystic from the Middle Ages, Meister Eckhart, said, “If the only prayer you said was thank you, that would be enough.”
So there it is . . . my prayer for you today is a series of actions: that you stop, look, enjoy, and give thanks to God. (And say “thanks” to whoever else around you had a hand in bringing you beauty and enjoyment, as well.)
God loves you. Receive God’s blessings.
Grace and peace,
Rick
*Refers to John 5:2-9, especially verse 4, concerning the pool at Bethesda within which, according to legend, when the water was stirred by an angel one might enter and be healed.
