Grasping That Extra Day

Every fourth year, little February gets a bit longer, twenty-four hours to be exact. What will you do with this extra day? I decided I’d look back at some of my past writings that, for one reason or the other, never left home. Making a book of these unpublished stories might be good because there’s a lot of them. Maybe some day when I’m rich and famous, somebody will discover them in a dark and dusty attic and the writing world will be turned on its ear, like Van Gogh’s hidden paintings or Rembrandt’s (are there any, Jane?) or…maybe a secret letter written by Edgar Allen Poe…well, you get the idea.

Anyhow, I wrote this observation while I still lived in Oklahoma, at Manos Meadows, our acreage north of Tahlequah. So, for the first time anywhere, here ’tis:

Have you ever wondered how God looks at His handiwork on earth? If you have gazed at earth from the lofty viewpoint of an airplane, you noticed clouds far below you; trees and houses that looked doll-sized. Is this the way God sees us? I am convinced it is not. He does not view us from afar, but as near as our heartbeat.

On my walks around our pasture, I see many things that would not be at all visible from an airplane. The tiny, four-petaled bluet studs the ground and a perfect, pink wildflower no more than one-fourth of an inch across, crowds in among them. Wild violets and buttercups rejoice in the new day.

Wet with dew, a terrapin slogs through the grass on his way to find a breakfast of wild strawberries. Passing the back fence which is burdened with yellow and white honeysuckle, I drink in their fragrance and smile.

A honeybee zips past on the way to her hive in the old garden. No matter how close I come to their small white box home, the bees never bump into me although I can hear the hum of their wings.

Small things, little things of beauty make up the world God made. He does not consider them from a distance, but up close and personal. The perfection of a baby’s tightly curled fist, the trust in the eyes of a child, the bumblebee in a purple thistle bloom; these are of infinite joy to our Creator. He delights in His small world.