We couldn’t believe it. He was in paradise, surrounded by the bold strokes of God’s creation, and he was unaffected. But, really, most of our days are like that. It’s easy to walk through life bumping into beauty and rushing by rich experiences that we forget it’s all a gift.
God is trying to get our attention, but we go on pretending we’ve got this life down—like we shouldn’t be excited about anything. I like the way Annie Dillard puts it in her book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek:
“I am no Scientist. I explore the neighborhood. An infant who has just learned to hold up his head has a frank forthright way of gazing about him in bewilderment. He hasn’t the faintest clue where he is, and he aims to learn. In a couple of years, what he’ll have learned instead is how to fake it: He’ll have the cocksure air of a squatter who has come to feel he owns the place. Some unwonted, taught pride diverts us from our original intent, which is to explore the neighborhood, view the landscape, to discover at least where it is that we have been so startlingly set down, if we can’t learn why.”
Bob became energized by our excitement as it intensified with every catch. Bob seemed to transform before our eyes as our shared joy was unleashed on the glistening pond and the iridescent trout underneath the surface. Bob seemed to live in our praise, he came alive.
There was nothing syrupy or mawkish about it, it was pure unadulterated gratitude for being there, for being alive, for breathing the crisp air and feeling the small mouths of trout wrapped around miniature hooks. It was a beautiful connection of praise, generosity and thanks.
That’s how Bob got paid.
That’s what you get someone who has everything. You share their joy, their passion.
I really believe it’s like that with God. When our hearts and minds are unabashedly amazed by Him, and we let go in unfettered praise, God gets paid. Too many people spend their time, cocksure, toiling over paying God back with their perfect lives, keeping the list, and in doing so they shut their eyes to the beauty and place and life God has set us down into.
When we hit a lull at the first pond. Bob told us to jump back in the truck. We didn’t want to leave. We fought him on it.
But he told us, “There’s more.”
