One evening as he (Isaac) was taking a walk out in the fields, meditating, he looked up and saw the camels coming. (Genesis 24:63, NLT).
Lettie Cowman (1870-1960) was a saintly missionary to Japan. She never hit a golf ball, but her December 24 devotional (Streams in the Desert, 1926) made me remember one of the reasons to play golf.
I have stayed way too busy most of my life. I am guilty of not having enough ‘alone time.’ I have failed to play enough golf alone in the morning of a sunrise or the evening of a setting sun, walking with no one but God Himself. Listen to my dear friend Lettie:
“We should be better Christians if we were more alone; we should do more if we attempted less, and spent more time in retirement, and quiet waiting upon God. The world is too much with us; we are afflicted with the idea that we are doing nothing unless we are fussily running to and fro; we do not believe in ‘the calm retreat, the silent shade.’ As a people, we are of a very practical turn of mind; as someone has said, ‘we believe in having all our irons in the fire, and consider the time not spent between the anvil and the fire as lost, or much the same as lost.’ Yet no time is more profitably spent than that which is set apart for quiet musing, for talking with God, for looking up to Heaven. We cannot have too many of these open spaces in life, hours in which the soul is left accessible to any sweet thought or influence it may please God to send.”
“‘Reverie,’ it has been said, ‘is the Sunday of the mind.’ Let us often in these days give our mind a ‘Sunday,’ in which it will do no manner of work but simply lie still, and look upward, and spread itself out before the Lord like Gideon’s fleece, to be soaked and moistened with the dews of Heaven. Let there be intervals when we shall do nothing, think nothing, plan nothing, but just lay ourselves on the green lap of nature and ‘rest awhile.’… City men cannot do better than follow the example of Isaac and, as often as they can, get away from the fret and fever of life into fields. Wearied with the heat and din, the noise and bustle, communion with nature is very grateful; it will have a calming, healing influence. A walk through the fields, a saunter by the seashore or across the daisy-sprinkled meadows, will purge your life from sordidness, and make the heart beat with new joy and hope. ‘The little cares that fretted me, I lost them yesterday… Out in the fields with God.’”
So, have you lately laid yourself “on the green lap of nature… out in the fields with God”? Doesn’t that sound like a walk down a fairway with just four clubs and the good Lord whispering in your ear?
And by the way, what did Isaac find as he walked in that field? He found Rebekah, “and she became his wife. He loved her very much.” (Genesis 24:67). Maybe you too will find such a gift “out in the fields with God.”
Prayer: Lord, forgive me for being too busy to spend time alone with you. Whisper to me this evening as we walk down the fairway. Amen.”