Half a year has already passed by. Do you ever think back to January around this time of year and wonder at how much has changed or transpired in just half a year? I do, and I am always amazed at the things I discover that I didn’t know then but I know now.
I began my running journey this January, conspiring to run and think my way through the last 20 years of my CD song collection that I loaded on my mp3 player. I have temporarily laid aside my mp3 player for this particular part of my running journey. Like running, life can sometimes take us down different paths. Two of my fellow running comrades have recently passed away since the beginning of this year, both too young and too sudden. And I have lost others too, in the sense that after more than a decade of seeing them almost every day at my job, running with them, taking coffee breaks and talks, they will be leaving as part of unexpected job layoffs. So I have traded my mp3 runs at the moment for a few remaining running and work conversations, and precious talks that are of the most urgent and non-committed kind.
I have also just returned from a week of traveling in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, where my morning runs took on a more silent, spiritual ritual all of their own, as I reflected on this half of a year. I began to look forward to this time alone, and to take in the beauty and “sounds of silence” that only God’s nature can speak to. We all need these times where we put down the mp3, forget, and just listen. So today, here are pictures, and not so many words, from my morning runs in Yellowstone.
Running at the top of the world.
No grizzlies on today’s run, but I did run across this guy.
Do I walk past him at the end of the trail or turn around and go back?
My favorite ~ blue dragon flies. In the simplest and smallest of things, life is amazing!
The Grand Finale of morning runs – WOW!
And of course, Old Faithful
What a unique creature! Wonder what he is thinking?
If one ever doubts the existence of a magnificent God, then a trip to Yellowstone is a must-see for a lifetime! It will make you believe, or nothing will.
And a magnificent God will lead us through the second half of the year too, no matter what may come. Life is precious. I sit here now, waiting in a hospital for a family surgery, the same hospital where many things began for me so many years ago… lest I ever forget what God has done in my life. I am in His Hands, which is the best and only place to be.
