“Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,’ even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.” Psalm 139:7-12 (NIV)

Last fall, our younger son, William, started middle school, and that meant I needed to walk him to school and from school every day, about a 30-minute walk each way.

It’s a good thing, really — it’s great one-on-one time, and it’s good exercise.

But for the first month, getting used to it was embarrassingly hard — after more than two years of William walking with friends to his school just one block over, this new schedule felt like a lot … I was always late and dressed wrong for the weather, and my legs were mortifyingly sore, as though I were training for a marathon, not just walking to the West Village.

Something shifted, though, about six weeks into this new routine: I found that I’d started to look forward to it. My legs weren’t constantly tired anymore, and the part of the walk I did alone — after dropping him off or on the way to meet him in the afternoons — started to become one of my favorite times of the day.

I started what I call “delight hunting,” being on the lookout for beautiful, interesting or funny things: an ivy-covered building; the sun glinting off the Hudson River; a dog in a backpack, his front paw slung over his owner’s shoulder in such a human way that I still giggle when I think about it. I found a little secret garden near the school and sometimes left home early to sit there in the quiet. The walk became a source of delight, and I began to see God’s divine fingerprints everywhere. The psalmist of Psalm 139 seems to have felt the same way:

“Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,’ even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you” (Psalm 139:7-12).

We see what we’re looking for. You know the phenomenon: You buy a Jeep Wrangler, and all of a sudden it seems like every third car on the road is a Wrangler. When you get a puppy, everywhere you go, there are puppies! Were there always this many puppies?

The opposite is true, too, of course. When you wonder if a friend is mad at you, every text from that friend supports your sneaking suspicion. After a series of delayed or canceled flights, when you look at the “arrivals and departures” board, all you see are the delays.

We see what we’re looking for, and what I’m looking for these days is delight. Beauty. Evidence of God’s sacred presence all around us and within us, in the face of every person on the sidewalk, in the intricacy of the flowers in that secret garden, in the sky as the sun rises and sets everything ablaze.

Theologian Eugene Peterson has said that “to eyes that see, every bush is a burning bush.”

That’s how I want to live: a witness to the glory of God all around us. Even — especially — on the school-pickup walk, on plain old streets and sidewalks, in the daily moments of life.

Dear heavenly Father, thank You for the beauty and vibrancy of the world You created. Please give me eyes to see what’s beautiful all around me and a heart that bends toward delight. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

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FOR DEEPER STUDY

Psalm 121:5-8, “The LORD watches over you—the LORD is your shade at your right hand; the sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night. The LORD will keep you from all harm—he will watch over your life; the LORD will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.” (NIV)

When was the last time you felt a sense of God’s presence? What could you do today to remind yourself of the beauty of the world God created?

© 2023 by Shauna Niequist. All rights reserved.

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