Pastor's Column: Just a closer walk

I walk. A lot.

Maybe I waved when you drove by. (If I didn’t – Sorry! I always mean to.) Maybe we visited as you watered your plants last summer, or shoveled your sidewalk last week.

Since I moved to Ritzville in July, I’ve walked every block of every street, most of them several times. I’ve walked miles out into the county. The times I love best are in the morning or just before sunset, when the low sun catches the bright green of the new blades of wheat, and highlights the gentle curves of the rolling fields. As the light fades in the later evening, my other senses are heightened: I hear a rustle of movement in dry grasses, feel the breeze on my face, smell of wood-smoke, or livestock miles upwind, or someone’s dinner cooking.

I walk partly for bodily health, but it’s also a spiritual practice. Walking grounds my soul in this place, slows my racing mind to the pace we humans have lived all through our history, until the advent of machines and media. These days, we are so hurried, and we dwell so much on the past or worry about the future, and we distress ourselves with people and events that are beyond our horizons of influence. Walking helps me to surrender my dependence on those pressures, and to receive the present moment as God’s good gift.

Sometimes along my walks I take pictures. I post some of them on Facebook, because when I see beauty, I want to share it; I want to let the world know that God is in this place! When I say hello to someone along the way, sometimes the conversation goes deep, and I realize that God is in this conversation, and I’m awestruck. When I see the green of wheat coming up through the snow, and I remember last summer’s amazing harvest, I am grateful, and I realize that God is in it all.

As a disciple of Jesus, I want to learn from him. And Jesus, of course, walked. (The only time we know he rode, his disciples had to borrow a donkey!)

Did you ever notice how many of Jesus’ sacred conversations took place while on a walk? Jesus called disciples “as he was walking.” (Matthew 4:18 and 9:9) While walking through Samaria, Jesus paused, and met the woman at the well (John 4). And of course, Jesus taught his disciples as they walked the dusty roads of Palestine.

Did you ever notice how many times Jesus walked away from his tasks and his people, to go to a deserted place to pray? Walking to a lonesome place was a regular spiritual practice. (Luke 5:16 and 6:12, etc.)

Not all of us can walk far, especially in winter. But all of us can slow down. Even if it’s only for a few minutes a day, we can quiet our minds and hearts, and rest in God’s presence. We can turn off the screens, and set aside our own agendas, and discover the gift of quiet rest, near to the heart of God. What a gift!