Expect the Unexpected

I am a glutton for nature and beauty. For the third day in a row, it was gorgeous weather yesterday so I had to race out with my kayak to the Catawba River. I cannot help myself. Truth be told, I was a little tired, and my muscles all a little leaden, but how could I not kayak when the sky was blue, the sun was shining, and it was near 80 degrees in April?

There were quite a few other people on the river so the wildlife was hiding. I prefer to have the river to myself because I see more nature then. However, it was still beautiful, and I was still praising God for the wonder and joy and beauty of His creation. And then I saw something I have never seen before!

I skimmed right up to a mammal that was floating on the water. The large brown furry creature startled, as did I, and a large flat tail disappeared beneath the surface. I am almost certain it was a beaver. I have never seen a beaver in the wild. I stayed still, bobbing on the waves, waiting to see if it reappeared but it didn't. I had already convinced myself that I would see no nature when so many other people were about, and the river so turbulent with all the motorboats zipping by. What a strange perplexity that would be the day I would see a wild animal I had never had the pleasure of seeing before. If I had been looking for something with anticipation, I would have seen him much sooner and caught more than just a glimpse of a tail.

Expect the unexpected. Do not have preconceptions about what a day will bring. It limits what we see, or what God shows us. I almost didn't see the beaver at all, even though he was right in front of me, because I was so certain I would see no animals that day. I wonder how often I have circumvented a miracle that was right in front of my face because I was so certain it could not happen? These are good thoughts as I head out this morning in my volunteer work as a pro-life sidewalk counselor at the abortion mill.

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James 4:13-14 

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.

2 Kings 7:2 

Then the captain on whose hand the king leaned said to the man of God, “If the Lord himself should make windows in heaven, could this thing be?” But he said, “You shall see it with your own eyes, but you shall not eat of it.”

John 16:13 

When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.

Ephesians 2: 4-9

⁴ But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, ⁵ made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. ⁶ And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, ⁷ in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. ⁸ For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— ⁹ not by works, so that no one can boast.