New Paths

I started my dog walk on Saturday with a bit of a heavy heart for one reason or another. Things had not gone as planned and all made a bit more difficult by the current lockdown. Not wanting to rush, I took a different route, one which was clearly not well used for the path was overgrown and the nettles prolific. I almost turned back when a deer and her young stood up in the long grass. Mum turned and ran, but the little one stayed where it was and just looked at us. As we both stood still watching one another, the moment seemed to stretch and it seemed as if it was just her and I in the silence. Eventually, she turned and ran into the trees. As Macy and I walked on further into this undisturbed place, butterflies rose around us only to resettle as we went by. It’s hard to describe the sense of peace it brought me.

Walking home, I reflected that had I not gone on a new path, I would never have experienced that moment, and perhaps that is good to remember just now. Many of us are being forced down new paths just , paths we would perhaps not have chosen, as our work and home and even church environments change. Yet  perhaps it is only when we are pushed out into these new ways  we are forced to be open to what is around us and to live more in the presence of God and his leading than our own worlds, for all its discomfort, we may yet cherish the things we find on our new paths.



See, I am doing a new thing!
    Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
    and streams in the wasteland. Isaiah 43 vs 19