The Trip and the Gifts

(When The Water Flows Backward)

Recently, I took a trip through some of the most spectacular country in America – the southwestern Colorado Rockies.  The evergreens were green.  The aspens were varied yellows.  The cottonwoods were gold.  The brush was shades of red, maroon, and rust. The mountains were sheer grandeur with caps of white. It was an experience of breathtaking and enthralling beauty.  It was healing and restoring.

Actually, it was like being gone from home for a while and returning to experience anew its comfort and blessing.  What it brought forth was a sense of gratitude for the privilege of life and its existence on this earth.  This is our greatest gift.  I add to this another gift – that I have been personally blessed with the economic status that makes driving across its expanse a possibility.  And it all speaks two messages to me.

The first message is that I am a temporary guest on this beautiful planet.  Billions of other creatures have walked its surface and flown its skies and are long gone.  Someday the same will be said of us humans.  And the span of our existence will be determined by how well we give back to the earth what we take from it – which is the extent to which we learn the difference between partnership and exploitation. 

The second message is that I am blessed by fate.  It is fate that opened the door of my existence: This time, this nation, this place, this gender, this ethnicity, this, this, this, and this. It is all unearned.  It is all a blessing.  Some are gifted with greater blessing and some are gifted with lesser blessing. Whatever my degree of blessing I am responsible for how I use it.  The certainty is that I will continue to be blessed to the extent that I am a blessing.  The reason is because it is how I use my gift of life to bring blessing to others that my own degree of blessing is enlarged.  This is captured by an old adage that one’s bread is only returned by casting it upon the flowing waters.  It is the casting of my bread that causes the water to flow backward.

Christmas was intended to remind us of these messages.  And the extent to which I heed them will be the extent to which I will be blessed both during the season and beyond.

Robert