Purpose

After a long week, it was so good to enter the weekend today! I slept in 'till 11am, giving me over 10 hours of sleep; it was fantastic. Today's agenda: snowshoeing and groceries.

JM and I broke out the snowshoes in the River Valley this afternoon. I have taken a real liking to snowshoeing since I tried it for the first time last year. This year I gave up renting and bought my own pair; I have been several times this winter. Mostly it's just JM and me, but we are slowly pulling people over to the fun side of winter! ...The goal is usually to trek for about an hour, so while snowshoeing, we usually catch up on the other person's day/week, and chat about whatever is at the forefront of our minds at that moment. Such was today, until about 40 minutes in...

As we were making the loop around the ravine to come back to the main park area where we had started, JM noticed some kids playing in the creek below and commented on how it reminded her of days gone by with her older brothers. The scene was a brief recollection of childhood for both of us until we realized one of the children was crying and uncomfortably trying to get over to where his friends were. The kids realized we were there at the same time we realized that we should probably help. I slid down the hill into the ravine, asking to help, while simultaneously changing the gears of my brain into First Aid mode.

It was a big relief that we were not dealing with blood-and-bones-type injuries. Still, his foot had gone through some thin ice in the creek and he had filled his boot with cold, icy water. The poor kid was wet from the shin down, and therefore cold. He definitely didn't need to be down the ravine any longer. From the bottom of the hill, I started helping the kids up towards JM so she could continue pulling them up with her ski poles. At the top, we created a more organized action plan to get them all home. JM put her mitten on his foot, and piggy-backed him while I carried poles, boots, etc., and walked with the other three. Except our cold little man didn't want to go home. Suffice it to say he wasn't exactly s'posed to be playing down there in the first place. I'm sure he felt like strangers returning him to his parents would be adding insult to injury. I understood. But I also had the word 'hypothermia' screaming in my head, and knew that an adult needed to be available on the other end. We briefly considered heading to the house of the other children, but as he was still shivering quite significantly when we finally got around the ravine and up to the residential area, we stuck to the original go-home plan.

Yup, discipline was alluded to by his parents as we dropped him off at his house. I tried to reassure them that he hadn't been anywhere dangerous--he was just wet and we wanted to make sure he got home safely.

As JM and I walked back to the park, we chatted quite animatedly about this impromptu adventure. At one point, JM commented on the randomness of the event and wondering what God had meant by placing that in our afternoon. What were we supposed to glean from it? ...We didn't really conclude anything substantial.

As I was driving home from my grocery shopping, mind you, I thought to myself, maybe God didn't mean for us to get anything out of the afternoon. God uses a lot of circumstances and events to allow us to learn something about Him, His world, His children, and to learn something about ourselves. But that's not the primary reason for anything, is it? All situations, all interactions, all events--they're for His glory. Are we so arrogant to think that God orchestrates events so that we can learn something from them?

...Now, ironically enough, I realize that by gaining this insight, it means I have learned something from my adventuresome afternoon, albeit indirectly. But we so linearly think that big or unusual events must come with meaning. It's not like I learned something new about interacting with children this afternoon; all the skills I used I already had. I didn't gain any parenting wisdom as I was helping the kids or interacting with the child's parents; it was familiar social territory. I didn't gain any new friendship insight; JM and I have been through crazier. The actual situation didn't remind me of anything I didn't already know. And I don't think those kinds of situations (and even bigger ones) necessarily need to bring new insights or learning. Is it such a stretch to think that God might just take the skills and talents He's already given us for nothing more than His glory? So that we (and others) might see a glimpse of Him in their day? And not to learn anything from that glimpse of glory but to just experience it?