David Comeau- noland trail

Our walk on the Noland Trail placed many thoughts in my head. I remember walking along the trail between classmates and feeling nothing. As I walked, trying to keep pace with the majority of the group, I tried to focus my mind on my surroundings and what I was supposed to learn from them. It always frustrates me when I feel like I am trying to “connect” with God but he is not doing his half of the work. This is how I felt during the beginning half of the walk. I was racing through the forest that I knew in my head was God’s marvelous creation, but did not feel our hearts connecting at all. I was thinking about the week ahead in hour long time chunks. Each one was filled with classes and meetings and school work. That’s when I was hit with a thought that is beginning to transform who I am and how I go about my daily life.
As I was walking through the forest half-heartedly praying to God that I would truly see life the way he sees it, I felt that I needed to slow down. After about two minutes of walking at a slower pace and letting everyone get ahead of me, I walked off the trail and down a hill towards the lake and sat down on a tree branch. I just sat and looked out between two hanging tree branches that stretched over the water. As I sat there I realized it had been a long time since I had really been still before the Lord. I didn’t even know what it was like to truly calm my heart before God anymore. I reflected on my past week and tried to see where God was working and what he was doing. My life had been such a blur and was so crammed that I couldn’t see god in any of it. I looked out on the water and it was motionless, it seemed so still, waiting for something to happen almost. Then the wind came and the water began to move towards the shore. The spirit is often thought of as a strong wind. I realized that the water, being still, was then moved by the wind. Although I know this is not a perfect analogy scientifically speaking, I felt like I was moving so fast, unlike the water, that I was not allowing myself to be moved by the spirit.
I realized that the reason I was not seeing God in my life everyday was that I was moving so fast I was not allowing the spirit to move me. Even further, when he was I was already going at such high speeds he was easy to miss. In reflecting deeper about this, it has been clear to me that this can apply to all facets of my life. As a Christian I have grown up hearing people pray to see the world through Christ’s eyes, and have prayed that often myself. However, I came to the realization on the trail and it has continued to resonate with me that Jesus did not have a busy schedule. He did not meet with people in forty-five minute blocks every day before moving on to grab to-go meals so that he could fit in time for everything else. He wouldn’t have run to classes ignoring or having hasty conversations with everyone in his way.
Jesus stopped to talk to beggars, homeless men, lepers. He ate long meals with tax collectors and enjoyed fellowship with Samaritan women. On his way through a busy town with tons of people on the road making commotion, he felt the touch of a sick woman and stopped. His disciples told him that the people were crowding and pressing against them. He didn’t say “sorry I’ve got to meet with these people real quick, then fit in five minutes with peter and John, then maybe try to grab a bite on my way to the synagogue by 6 o’clock.” No he listened to the woman who touched fim, and he healed her. I realized that walking through campus with crowds of friends and fellow students rushing to class, I pass by people just as spiritually sick as the woman bleeding to death in this story. However, I don’t see them because I am in such a hurry.
In continuing my thoughts spurred on by my experience on the trail I read Acts three. As Peter and John were going to the synagogue for the three o’clock prayer they saw a crippled beggar sitting outside the temple gates. They stopped, had him look them in the eye and talked to him. Then they healed him from his disease and he went off praising the lord. Other people saw this and came to know the Lord through this as well. In reading this I pictured Peter and John on their way to a three o’clock class in the library. I saw tons of people racing in ahead of them to get in on time. But they stopped to talk to one person, broken, maybe smoking a cigarette, sitting alone on the steps. It really spoke a lot to me about how often I pass by people every day on my way to classes that I feel like I should talk to but I don’t because I am always in a hurry. For the past two weeks I have been praying that my time truly become God’s and trusting him that If I walk through life slowly, trusting in his timing, he will show me the world through his eyes; the brokenness as well as the beauty of his creation and that he would be glorified in all of it.