While my husband goes off to meet with important people, I walk the streets of London with my camera. And really, there is more beauty here than I can take in. Tall spires keeping their watchful eye over the crowds below, stone buildings that collect stories of centuries, rod iron gates that stand at attention, protect what lies beyond.

My cell phone isn’t working, email isn’t sending, and my usual comfort zone of communication vanishes.  It is just me, learning to be comfortable with me.  Because sometimes in the doing of life, we push the sacredness of being down so far we forget who we are.

This window of time is a gift. When do we have a window of time to choose?  Choose what we do without another voice or opinion to influence.  I use it to get binocular vision.

See the girl with the doe eyes staring out the giant window in the café, a woman reading a book in a delivery truck, disheveled souls with pink puffy cheeks and sunken eyes loiter the lawn of a church.  Teenage girls sit on a sidewalk in a huddle of laughter, a young boy climbs out of the taxi with his father who drives. Kids enjoying an unplanned school holiday because of a public workers strike.

Then I notice this patch of pavement, imprinted with leaves that fall from trees.  A collage of beauty embedded like paint on the road by the traffic that passes over. I bend over to look close because it seems strange that they stick here and not in other places. Then it makes me wonder.

As Christ followers, how do we stand out from the rest of the world? What is the imprint of God on me? On you?

I want to leave behind a monument of faith, a lasting impression, a marker of God’s faithfulness for my children like those ancient buildings that stand the test of time.  What about you?

The real question is how do we do that?

Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. ~Proverbs 31:30

Linking with Ann and  Emily , Winsome Wednesdays , God-bumps & God-Incidences