Connection

Around 7:30 one morning, I walked outside my house and paused a moment on the driveway before beginning my daily walk. Like the doe I wrote about in the previous blog post, I needed to make sure no danger was lurking nearby.  

Much to my surprise, when I looked to my right, I saw the right rear flank of a deer, but the rest of its body was hidden by scuppernong vines. I readied my cell phone camera and then coughed softly, hoping the slight noise would startle the deer just enough to cause it to reposition itself but not enough to make it bolt. My tactic worked.

The deer backed up a bit in order to see the source and location of the noise.                                                                                                                    

I gasped with delight, not fear, when I saw a young buck. He stood stone still while I snapped a couple of photos. After I lowered my phone, we continued to make eye contact with each other for several seconds before he fled toward his home in the woods.

As I began my walk, I continued to feel the joy of that momentary connection. I thanked God for it—and the photos! I remembered that God wants all His creation to live in harmony. But since sin entered the world ages and ages ago and disrupted the peace and harmony and replaced it with antagonism, the creatures experience only rare and fleeting moments of connectedness (and trust!) that God desires to be the norm.

Innumerable reversals will occur one future day when God sets all things right. The prophet Isaiah mentioned many of them, including these:

The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb,

The leopard shall die down with the young goat,

The calf and the young lion and the fatling together;

And a little child shall lead them….

They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain,

For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD

As the waters cover the sea.

Isaiah 11:6-9, NKJV

 

It’s hard to imagine such peace and harmony, such absence of fear and danger and aggression, isn’t it?

But all those miracles, and countless others, will happen when God says the time is right. Until then, I relish even brief moments of connection.