AT THE SIDE OF THE ROAD

I was driving south on Hwy 121, listening to the cacophony that is sports radio, when I noticed a blade of grass growing at the side of the road. Amazing; how did I notice her, in all of her singular isness; surrounded by a billion cousins--who was she that I should notice her? And yet her integrity, her striving upwards to God, her simple enjoyment of the gentle breeze and morning sunshine caused me to turn off the radio and roll down the window so that I might take in the beauty of all her people: no longer green, and soon-to-be-mowed, they were tall and stately nonetheless. They stood silent, but perhaps...could it be possible?...they noticed the attention paid them and returned the favor by bowing their graceful wheat-like stalks?

This fellowship, this commraderie between me and all these blades of grass, was (is) a far richer thing than the radio's continual noisy attacks upon my secret self, or than the continual mental chatter of my own mind. Am I not one of them--a blade a grass, here today and tomorrow perhaps not even a memory to those who speed along the world's highway! Have I, I wonder, ever truly been noticed, even by myself, for who I am? Have you? Thanks be to the God who sees, knows, and loves each one of us for who we are, in whom we have a deep-rooted, eternal and joyous fellowship. R.