After our Thanksgiving festivities of last Friday and a long hard week, I came down with a cold. I especially started not feeling well after I dunked my Olympus digital camera into a cup of rooibos tea (read earlier blog entry). As a result, I stayed indoors all day Saturday and most of Sunday trying to get better while Ken adventured out. The following is what he e-mailed me once he got to his office on Saturday morning.
“I caught a bus rapidly. Good thing because it IS icey. The walk on the other side of Abai street past Wessman’s old flat was fantastic. I felt like I had God’s canopy over me, tree branches covering the sky with soft, thick snow. My eyes were forced UP, but if I looked to the side I saw gray Soviet type apartment building with glitzy commercialism in first floor converted shoppes. Fortunately, they were overpowered by the nature of the trees, and as I looked up into the gray sky, I saw a bluing patch of sky.”
How I wish I could have seen what he saw but such is the way of colds, they may take us out temporarily but it is nature’s way of telling us to slow down. Conversely, nature has a way of telling Ken that not all was forbidding black with his work here in Almaty. When he looked up and saw God’s beauty among the white snow laden branches and the hopeful blue sky, he was refreshed and invigorated.
I don’t feel so blue today. Actually, I’m ready to launch out into the new day to see Almaty with all its colors now that the snow is mostly melted. I know we have hope in a dreary black and white world only when we hang on to God’s promises for us. (such as Ps. 121)
