1/12/20
10:44 am
Cusco, Peru
I’m sitting up high looking over the square waiting for my coffee. It is a beautiful day, about 65 degrees. The square is filled with people from all over. There is beautiful music playing over the loud noises of the city. You can feel the drum beat in your chest.
Looking around you take in all the colors of the flowers that fill the garden that sits in the middle of the square. Your eyes are filled with purples, yellows, oranges, whites, deep reds, and every shade of green. In the center there is a fountain where kids and their families gather to rest and enjoy the bands.
Behind all of the aging stone churches and tan homes that stack behind one another are mountains. Some so close I could almost reach out and grab them. Others are so far off they look like shadows. As the clouds move, the far off mountains come into the light, showing their green landscape.
Meanwhile in the square locals stand on the street corners with hands full of flyers for tours and massages. They are trying to keep up with the fast life of the tourist. The square is filled with them (I find myself guilty of being one too). They are running to take pictures of the rapid moving band and dancers that fill the brick streets. You can see some of them putting on sunscreen because they have never been this close to the sun before.
Everyone is playing their part, the tourist wondering the streets not knowing where to go next, the local trying to make a living, the taxi driver rushing through the city, and kids that aren’t in school because they are helping their parents make a living. One thing I don’t see are people stopping to take in the city that they are walking through.
At the end of the day when everyone returns to their homes they won’t remember the flowers or the way the clouds look in the sky. They will have thousands of pictures that one day they will delete because it is the Super Bowl or their son is graduating. They won’t give this place a second thought. It simply goes on a list of things they can brag to their friends about.
What all these people don’t see is God. He put the clouds there so you have shade and aromas that take you back to the moment when you smell them at home. God made beauty in everything around us. He took the time to slow down and look at that beauty. So we should too.
Genesis 1:31 “…it was very good…”
