For as long as I can remember, I’ve believed that everything in life is a metaphor—each moment teaching us if we have the eyes to see and the ears to hear.
Every other year, I spend a week in South Haven, Michigan. And, with apologies to the other forty-eight states I’ve traveled to, I think Michigan might just be my favorite. But I digress. Each day during our vacation, we walk several blocks from our rental house to Lake Michigan. On one particular day, as we made our way down the final stretch of sidewalk to the beach, I noticed a discarded ice cream cone wrapper.
Now, as a side note, I’m not a huge fan of sweets. But everyone who knows me is well aware of my ice cream addiction. Eating half a DQ ice cream cake in one sitting or ordering multiple scoops at Graeter’s in a single visit speaks for itself. So, when it comes to ice cream cone wrappers, I know what I’m looking at. But it wasn’t just that the wrapper had been tossed aside or that it had anything really to do with ice cream that caught my attention. It was the way JOY had been tossed aside and abandoned after that last scrumptious bite, left to rest among dead plants, fallen leaves, and sand.
What a metaphor.
I couldn’t help but think about how many of us march through life, moving from point A to point B, following the same predictable paths of obligation and expectation, fear and division—completely blind to the quiet invitations of JOY that line the edges of our lives, unnoticed and unrecovered.
That’s pretty deep, I know. But stop and think about it for a moment. Have you abandoned joy? What has taken its place? And what predictable path do you continue to walk while your joy lies discarded? More importantly, what would it look like to recover it? It’s easy to make excuses for continuing the same paths day after day, oblivious to the JOY we have discarded. But, how much more fulfilled might we be if we were to take a risk and step outside the predictable path of the status quo?
This past summer, we stepped into our backyard to check on the progress of our small vegetable and flower garden. As we moved around to the far side, we noticed a stray flower that had blossomed and bloomed outside the planter box, thriving in a harsher, rockier patch of soil. It made us smile. So rather than transplanting it back with the others, we let it be.
Of course, it struck me as another profound metaphor—life, beauty, and even joy can be found and actually flourish in the most unlikely and unusual places. Sometimes, it’s because we have stepped away from the usual places, the predictable paths, that we find them. You may have heard it said that life, beauty, and joy are only found in certain places, but I’m here to tell you— they can be found in the most unexpected places, if you’re willing to open your eyes (and your heart) and then venture away from the predictable.
Question
What quiet invitations to joy have I overlooked in my daily routine, and how can I begin to notice them again?
Peace,
Brandon
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Peter Mayer of Minnesota sings a song called “Holy Now” which holds the line that loosely states that everything is a miracle and trying to find where there isn’t one is impossible.
The smallest things bring me great joy merely because they exist in a blind world and I happened upon Joy to the surprise of myself and the object I’m observing.
Peace to you.
The Celtic practice of listening for the heartbeat of God (book with that title by John Phillip Newell is excellent!) is one I rely on for this.