"The Earth is crammed with Heaven"

Some kind person posted this quote to this blog anonymously in reference to my post "Some Good Things Just Take Time To Happen". I found the whole poem and thought that I would share it.

“Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees, takes off his shoes - The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.” Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I have often wondered if we aren't walking around in the Garden of Eden and are just blind to it. This Sunday last, Pastor Mark told of talking to God. Seems he was on a trip with a group of our youth to a Lutheran mission in the Navajo nation to clean up a school and interact with some of the students.

Seems that Pastor thought to check the air in the tires of the trailer he was pulling. When he did, he noticed that they were low and the valve stem was leaking. He talked to God to ask what he should do now, since they were in a hurry and few stores were open at that time of the morning.

Then he remembered a nearby store but got no help. They were able to limp to another store where he found a very helpful person. This person changed the valve stem and they were about to be one there way when it occurred to Pastor to check the other one too. When he touched it, it just broke off! I prefer not to imagine what may have happened had the tires on that trailer gone flat at highway speeds with a van full of kids!

Some might say this was all just coincidence, but I would see the benefit of talking to God. I hear stories like this often and have experiences of being in the presence of God myself. And it is a great comfort as I enter the phase of my treatment that has essentially made it very painful to speak. Not that I have much to say anyway!

Not speaking is a blessing. It gives me time to listen, to think and to just "be". I don't need to speak to walk in the woods and understand that "The Earth is crammed with Heaven" and that I am in the presence of God and I don't have to speak to talk to him either. Of course, I do have to look for the answer...which I often find in the small places...when I look there.