Earth's crammed with heaven

Earth's crammed with heaven,

And every common bush afire

with God:

But only he who sees, takes off

his shoes.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Yes, Earth is crammed with Heaven, and it's our responsibility to take off our shoes. God isn't going to reach down and yank them off your feet. I am so blessed to live in a place where every morning I can get my coffee, stumble out the door and fall into Heaven. Each morning walk brings a kaleidoscope of God's beauty. I have much to be thankful for on this day of Thanksgiving. So many of our blessings are a matter of how we look at things, and if we slow down to view them from a different angle, the scene changes.

Yesterday I found myself in a rush to get errands run before the holiday, and the only thing shorter than my bank account, was my patience. I put the check for the property taxes in the mail and like a barn swallow in the wind, the last of my savings whooshed away. So with a heavy sigh, I closed the mail box door and drove away. Now I was not only on a tight schedule for the day, I was on a tight budget. That's when I notice that my truck was leaning.

Hmmmm.... that is never a good thing.

Close inspection revealed a flat tire. It really wasn't necessary to stand in the street and stare at deflated rubber. It has been my experience that this is never particularly productive, but I did it anyway. Fortunately I was close enough to home that I could limp back to an air compressor. So along with the barn swallows and my savings, holiday grocery shopping plans flew out too.

I found the nail. I also found out that my two front tires were bald. Suddenly the nail in the tire became a blessing. So I headed to Discount Tires. Apparently everyone else in the county also had the same idea because the parking lot was full and the wait was going to be long. Closer inspection revealed that not only did the front tires have to be replaced, the back ones did too.

Ouch!

Even cheap tires add up when you have to buy four of them, and so I was forced to drag out a credit card. Kicking and squealing, the credit card clawed to stay inside my wallet. I finally got it yanked out, blew the dust off it, and slid it through the machine. My heart sank and my card whimpered as the total rang up.

Then I went outside to wait. And wait. And wait. Eventually they came to put my truck on the lift. It looked so helpless hanging in the air, its little tires dangling. That's when the man came and informed me that the cheap tires I had purchased were not available. Would I mind if they upgraded the tires? No additional charge, of course.

Well.... there is only one answer to that question.

So while they fitted my truck with four brand-spankin' new tires, I took a moment to reflect on how circumstances become blessings.

Flat tire -- bad thing?

No. Inconvenient thing. Bad thing would be if the tire blew out at 70 mph on a dark, wet highway.

4 bald tires -- bad thing?

No. Better to find out now than at 70 mph on a dark, wet highway.

Long wait -- bad thing?

No, not if they ran out of cheap tires and upgraded me to tires I couldn't afford.

I'm slowly learning that the old saying, "every cloud has a silver lining," is true. Our job is to look for the silver lining. It's out there. Earth's crammed with heaven. Take off your shoes.