The Power of Community - Looking for God

I was having lunch with my neighborhood friend Doug yesterday and he asked if I wanted to go for a jog this morning with our friend Chris. We tend to go on a Tues, Thurs, or Sunday in the morning. We had back-slidden for a couple, make a that a few weeks, so I figured this was a perfect time to jump back on the horse, since the weather had been looking up lately, like 20 degrees (isn't that sick?). I didn't think to check the weather for the next morning.

So I wake up early this morning, Doug likes to run really early (like in the dark early) and I put on my stuff and step outside and think, WOW I wonder what the temperature is? If I would have been more awake I probably would have called off the whole thing. But I get in my car to meet at the jogging rendezvous point and my car temp says 1 degree... I start flicking the readout, thinking surely that can't be right? Ohhhh but it is right and I am freezing in the car! I start thinking maybe Doug and Chris bailed and I will just drive home. As I get closer and closer to the meeting point, I don't see them and I think, okay good, then just as I think about turning around, I see a couple of reflective strips in the dark and they are moving! Oh crud... Doug and Chris are there, now I have to go through with it. If they are going to do it there is no reason I can't do it. Besides, I am from Northern Wisconsin and I used to picnic in this weather, I like ice-fishing and polar bear clubs (or whatever else I need to tell myself).

We start running and I will be 100% honest with you, it was cold! My feet never got warm, my hands never got warm, the rest of me never got warm. I remember Doug saying, "is anyone else's eyeballs freezing?" But it wasn't as bad as I thought. In fact, as I was running I was cold but not freezing. We had a great time talking about what was going on in life, gave thanks for Chris' new job, and both Doug and Chris were taking their sons to Willow's boy's night out event in a couple weeks. So I starting looking on the bright side of things.

1. I set a record for my coldest jog
2. I got my exercise done and got the day started early
3. I did something I wouldn't have normaly done alone
4. I got to spend some time with a couple great guys
5. I didn't need a shower

Then at the end our jog something inspiring and beautiful happend. We saw a car turn toward us and in the headlights we say something like snow falling, only it wasn't snow, it was different. The car passed and I couldn't see it anymore. We finish our jog, I drive home and the sun just starts peeking up. I go to my son's room to wake him up, and I raise the curtain and see a beautiful sun rise and in the clean, crystal clear skies I see the something falling and glistening all around. The sun was reflecting off of billions of little, tiny ice crystals that were floating and falling from the sky. It looked like diamonds falling from the sky, My daughter said it looked like "fairy dust." It was amazingly beautiful and went on for 30 or 40 minutes.

It was cold but it was good - in adverse circumstances look for God's beauty and goodness because it is there.