Devotional - Tuesday, August 10th

Life I find is harder and easier to enjoy when we are reminded of what there is in this world to compare to...



I was out getting some work done one on of my job sites/restaurants and I couldn’t help hearing the lady next to me. She was about thirty eight years old and was off on a rant about how her husband that she had been with for more than three years was being such an unrealistic individual and that he is only in it for himself! After trying to block her out and carry on with the task at hand I heard why and how this all started. The gist of it came down to the fact that her husband didn’t want to buy her the Land Rover until she was 40 and that she would have to stick with her “ lame Honda Ridgeline” until then. Wow was all I could get out of that when I was packing up my tools. May be the “lame Honda Ridgeline” was enough.


It has been a dry winter for us here in Southern Alberta. The duck ponds are down and dry, the rivers are low and clear, the grasses are snapping with the harsh dry wind and yet I am confident knowing that the rain will come with spring. I like hearing the birds move in, seeing the grasses starting to grow from the littlest of root. I find that these simple cycles of our Canadian landscape are what drive me and keep my head a little higher looking forward to a new period. Is it wrong to feel guilty for knowing that we have “it” a little easier than our Kenyan Friends? (And yes I took into account the whole minus thirty degree thing in winter; at least we know this too shall pass!)


So my Grandpa is dying, it is kind of neat to see. No I don’t like to see this happen don’t get me wrong. Here is a man that has been around for eighty years now and has his family closer than ever. Both grandparents have their family to lean on and talk through the whole process with. I feel blessed to have had the ability to know this man all of my life. I see his knowledge now coming through in the people around him and how he has had a quiet and simple approach to showing his experiences to others. I kind of find it hard to look at and think through the fact that someday I will be there in his place knowing that the end is coming and that I will never be able to tell or share another experience again. I guess what I am realizing is that every day we need our family and friends close to us to share those experiences with because someday we will not have the chance to do so. I at times find this hard in my busy life and I look up to most of Kenya for the relationships they have and the time they dedicate to each other.


So if you have known me for more than a day or so you should know that I love to go fly fishing. I feel more connected out there to this place we call earth and more in tune with God than in any other setting I’ve come across. One day just after the official start of spring I was out enjoying a little stream, that shall remain nameless, and I had the best day of fishing I for a stream that size in many years. The day started out laid back and simple. I got to the river around 1100 and the river as very low and clear. Minutes in to the hike up stream a beautiful Brown trout was on the other end of the line and the endless wind seemed to have stopped. A little further up stream I was greeted by a pair of Great Horned owls that took off from their tree and cruised inches above the water and lead me farther upstream. I landed a dozen fish that afternoon and the day just keep getting better. All of the time that this “surface enjoyment” was going on I was feeling that this stream was way too low to be healthy and then it hit me. Wait a minute; the river is here at least! There was enough snow in the mountains to sustain it until the rains came. All of the day’s enjoyments seemed to be a bit of a non-issue compared to the fact that there was a river there that at all. It shouldn’t be hard to live and enjoy life but it is good to see it differently when compared to some of the bigger issues out there.


I wrote this “devotion” in a bit of an untraditional way because this is the way that I see this thing we call life. There are so many dynamics of life that can be taken or experienced in a different way all dependent on perspective. I am here in Kenya because these people teach me that life is what we make out of it. I need this reminder to be able to “enjoy and connect” with what I think truly matters.


Eric Milton