Waiting for God

Through much of the year the mountain ash tree on our southwest corner is nothing to catch the eye, but when it comes into its own, covered in clusters of bright red fruits, it takes the stage with native grace.

For me it's a reminder of a trip long ago...when my brave Grandma Dorothy packed my brother Joel and me into her car and took us on the long journey from our home in north central California to Spokane, Washington where her mother and sister (my great-grandmother and great-aunt) lived at the time.

I don't remember much about the trip, but I do remember the mountain ash in my Great-Grandmother's yard. It must have been about this time of year—it was definitely summertime because school was out—and the mountain ash was probably in it's glory.

Who could help noticing a tree like that? I wanted to have one of my own.

I think I dug up a seedling to bring home with the intent of growing my own mountain ash tree. If the plant survived the trip, it certainly didn't last long once we returned to California—I have no memory of it beyond my Great-Grandmother's yard. It was beautiful, but it wasn't for me. Not yet.

Today those memories stir a gentle awareness, a recognition that a part of the beauty of anything is in the rightness of its timing: Beauty isn't just an exquisitely played single note, but the combination of that note with a thousand others at just the right time to form a symphony.

My time? Like Jesus' brothers, I'm ready NOW—but Jesus, with the patience of a Man who really understands the music may say, "My time has not yet come." When His time does come, He's ready—and what He does at the right time is something of incomparable beauty.

#waitingforgod #mountainash

© Copyright August 2017 by Robert G. Robbins