“Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.” —Genesis 28:16 (NAS)
I’m a college grandma in a fall semester fiction-writing course. One evening I was to introduce an essay on the significance of place in fiction writing. Author Eudora Welty emphasized seeing place through eyes of discovery. The tired and overlooked and familiar setting, newly awakened, can deepen the meaning of the story.
As I drove onto the campus up a long hill, I was dazzled by flaming torches of red-orange maple leaves. A quartet of girls walked down the grassy slope toward a grove of trees. One broke free from the group and flung herself down on a crunchy cushion of leaves bunched beneath a tree. She lay on her back swinging her arms and legs, making a leaf angel. I’d made snow angels, but angels in leaves were a novelty.
Suddenly I wasn’t driving to class on an ordinary autumn evening. I was discovering place—place ablaze in sunset, transformed by a leaf angel, celebrated with youthful exuberance; place possessed of meaning that quickens me each time I revisit or remember it.
I wonder, how might I be revitalized if I began to see my life through eyes of discovery, if I looked for fresh meaning in my daily routine and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I do know it”?
Ever-present God who fills “all in all” (Ephesians 1:23), fill wherever I am with awareness of You.
