If You Blink, You'll Miss It

Recently, my family hit the highways and took a weekend roadtrip. In Texas, a road trip includes lots of flat land, miles of pastures, and rows of crops. It can get monotonous. When you are sitting in a car (or a minivan in our case), the view can seem all the same. The temptation would be to stop looking and to stop taking in the scenery. A good book or a few minutes of sweet "car" sleep might seem a whole lot more enticing then staring at the same old mile after mile.

The photo above is what I almost missed because I was engrossed in some book I had brought along to read. I happened to glance up mid-page and caught this sunset. I grabbed my digital camera and proceeded to break all safety laws as I stood up and leaned as close as I could get to my husbands window without obscuring his view (yes...as he drove). I just had to catch this beautiful sight.

It's a pretty good shot considering the fact that we were moving at about 70 miles per hour. The picture is good but not great. It's enough for me to have a memory but not enough to actually show the detail. We were just moving too fast.

Life moves fast. Even when it feels like it's moving slow. It moves fast...it just does.

And we get busy...we get busy doing so many things that aren't bad or that even make sense for the journey that we are on. But...when we look up and realize that something beautiful is happening, our ability to capture and remember the details may be limited because of the speed at which we travel.

My lesson from this photo...S-L-O-W-D-O-W-N.

Now this is a photo, that I took at a standstill. We were traveling on a dirt road...somewhere in between two teeny-tiny towns. Because the road was so rough, we had no choice other than to proceed at a snail's pace. Because we were moving so slow, I did not miss this:


In fact, I asked my husband to stop the RV. I leaned over him, completely obscuring his view to catch the shot. This is the driveway to someone's home. Gorgeous. I captured this sight on my camera and in my memory because we stopped to gaze.

Life is beautiful. My desire is to take it all in and to move slow enough so that I don't miss it's beauty. I figure that if I move fast I may still arrive at my planned destination, but what good does that do me if I missed the moments of beauty along the way?

Lord, help me to slow down...help me to keep my eyes peeled for those memory-making moments that you provide. Help me not to blink. I don't want to miss anything that you have given me to enjoy along the way of my journey.