Yesterday I made my nearly weekly trip to the yard waste facility here in Bellingham. Okay, I guess technically it is the Clean Green Transfer Station, but that isn’t essential to this story.

On my way home from there, I was one of many cars rounding a corner near our house. Suddenly all the cars in front of me came to a stop. The car at the front of this line up was a car that I recognized as belonging to one of the houses on the block. As I looked at the driveway where this car was trying to turn in to, there said a car blocking the driveway. And about 5 feet from the car was an elderly man, probably in his 70s, out smelling the many roses that lined the driveway. Roses that I had never even noticed before. The car at the front our lineup decided to pass on and circle back, and the line soon dissipated and I went on home. Home, but more aware of how fast I move through this world of His.

All this just to say that God poignantly gave me a visual of “stopping to smell the roses”. It was priceless. Despite my rampant pace, I need to remember that God is in the details. More than ever, I need to slow down my own pace so that I can experience more of God’s fullness.

As I read this verse this morning, I thought of those roses, of that man smelling them:

“The reward for humility and fear of the Lord is riches and honor and life.” –Proverbs 22:4, The Revised Standard Version

In today’s fast-paced world it takes a certain humility to slow down, to say there is something more important than what I am rushing to, or from. And in that slowing down, I will experience more of riches, honor… and life. Did you know that Webster lists one of the definitions of “humble” as “reflecting”? I didn’t know that.