Blessed by an excursion

After a friend of mine said a friend of hers had invited them to go blueberry picking yesterday afternoon, I felt the urge to invite myself, Ethan, and Emma along on the excursion.


So glad I did.


They didn't mind at all, and it gave me a chance to get some good pictures and to get Ethan outside doing something that he can do with his broken arm. Not to mention I've been eating blueberries nonstop since about 4pm yesterday.





I also had time to admire some different scenery, which I really appreciated. I've been rather overwhelmed lately with trying to keep my house up so that it can be viewed by potential buyers almost every single day. So, yesterday while someone was walking around our house and we were out in the midst of such calm beauty, I felt it was a good trade.



Emma was rather content at first picking berries, some ended up in her bucket, and some in her belly. However, it didn't take long for Princess Emma to start expressing her discontent with the heat and asking me if we could begin making our way back towards the shade.


I tried to keep encouraging her to remember the cause of the trip. To get a surplus of these delicious berries to bring home and enjoy for months to come. "You love to eat blueberries, Emma!" But she had moved past sharing the vision of blueberry bliss with her mama, and was now focused on a canopy with picnic tables that would offer her refuge from her nemesis, the sun.



Ethan has been struggling the past few weeks with obeying, and so unfortunately, I wasn't surprised with his choices to NOT quit throwing berries at his friends, to NOT stay close by where we could share his bucket, and to NOT argue or debate the instructions I was giving. I tried to keep calm as I encouraged him to appreciate the adventure and not to ruin it with bad choices.

And so we finally came to rest under that canopy with picnic tables. There we enjoyed some cold water and the children shared a soda pop. A sweet end to a not thoroughly sweet hour of blueberry picking.

Does my story sound at all familiar to you?

Through our daily walks with the Lord, we sometimes desire to experience something different. So the Lord will bless us with a little excursion that He knows will provide us with a surplus of goodies. As we start on this divine adventure, we gaze wide-eyed at all there is to enjoy! However, shortly into the journey, we are faced with the slightest feeling of discomfort, and before we know it, we're asking the Lord to go back to our comfortable little picnic tables in the shade. He tries to encourage us through our brothers and sisters in Christ or through our daily readings, but what we saw so clearly in the beginning is now overshadowed by a small cloud of inconvenience.

We struggle in listening to His instruction. We make poor choices thinking that we know our situation better than He does, and although we may glean a few treasures along the way, we miss out on joy of the experience, and also on the joy of sweet communion with Him along the way.

We come to rest in the shade with our selfish appetites satisfied, but our buckets are quite empty compared to what He had in mind when He made the plans for the adventure.

Does God have you in the midst of a full blueberry patch right now? Can you see the sweet fruit? Or, are you blinded by the sun and drained by it's warmth?

Sometimes I am convinced that I haven't even learned anything from the story of the Israelites.

What would happen if we spent more time obeying God's word, and less time coming up with our own plans? I have a feeling we may enjoy the soda pop at the end a little more if it is shared over conversation of our cheerful attitudes and obedience vs conversation of consequences for our whining and disobedience.