I wasn’t looking for beauty.  I was just hurrying from one place to another, trying to get done what needed to be done, trying to meet my looming deadline.

It was a cold, rainy day in late winter/early spring, and I had things to do.  I certainly wasn’t looking for beauty.

But I happened to glance down, and beauty stopped me in my tracks.

Such an ordinary thing—a limestone walk, wet with rain, with a few winter-weary fronds of foliage arching over it.  So ordinary, and yet so beautiful!

The pebbly texture of the limestone, highlighted by the water.  The bright, clear surface of the little puddle.  The sharp reflection of the foliage, and the softer reflection of the (more distant) tree trunk and bare branches.  The green length and brown tips of the leaves.

A whole homily on what really lies at the core of life preached itself to me in one quick glance at a wet walkway.

The green leaves with their brown tips speak of endurance and hope.  They’ve made it through the winter, not unscarred, but undefeated. 

The bright, clear water speaks of newness and freshness, even as the limestone cradling it speaks of life’s ancient pedigree.  This stone itself, once an ancient seabed, is filled with the fossils of tiny lives lived unimaginably long ago.

The soft reflections of the tree and its branches call to mind how bare trees seem to the eye to soften just before their new buds burst forth.

Patient endurance, hope, death and resurrection—it doesn’t get more basic, or more central, than that.

In my deadline-driven haste, I was ambushed by Beauty, and brought back to center.

“This is what matters; this is what life is all about. As you do your tasks, remember this.  Be grounded in this.  Let what you do flow from this.”

So God spoke to me through clear, fresh  water on ancient limestone and battered foliage.  How has God spoken to you lately?  Have you too been ambushed by Beauty?