I find myself, at times, just staring closely at the simplest things.

Or are they?

I can look at a leaf for a long time without getting bored with it.  What a marvel.

Take this fine leaf, for example.  The color, the texture, the veins, the stem.  It is all perfectly designed.

Now this one, had spent some time…. on a tree…. somewhere.  It probably lived up way, way high close to the sky.

It sprouted out from its branch, and grew into a big green leaf.  It gave shade.  It photosynthesized. It bumped into a bird.   Finally, for whatever reason, it fell from its tree and landed on this rock.

Sometime later, an older, more decrepit and shriveled leaf… fell from its tree too.

It found a soft place to land… on this big green leaf.

Who knows how long they had been there together, or how long they remained.  But there they were… at that exact place… in the same exact time.

They exchanged atoms.

Spectacular.

And then, a breeze probably founds it way along the crevices of that rock… and the two leaves parted ways.

It could have happened that way.

And when I chanced upon that spot, I never dreamed I would have so much to think about.

That leaf.  And the places it had been.

I don’t know that I’ll ever contribute anything of meaning to this world.   Yet….this again, is one of my daily assignments.  Not merely just to bumble through.

But to see past the surface of all moments.  To catch a glimpse of the shining wonders that live beyond…. and right beneath…. the obvious.

Those extraordinary opportunities we are given.  To see.

“What you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing; it also depends on what kind of a person you are.” – C.S. Lewis