I thank you God for most this amazing

Back in the day, high school sometime, somewhere Craig said words that changed things for me. I remember these words as a comment during seminary class, but I can't remember for sure. Maybe Craig was in my seminary class 1st semester of senior year? Perhaps it was at church. There were so many comments about God from Craig that they bleed together, but this one was not to me alone. It was to a class of people, but it touched my heart all the same.

Craig walked to school often (I can still picture him coming in to the band room, frosty cheeked, in the mornings with his trumpet). He shared with the class how when he walked to school he tried to use the time to pray to God, and specifically to thank God for all the beautiful things that he saw and experienced. His walking prayers, he said, were ones of gratitude, of quiet contemplation about the wonder of the world. It seemed so Craig-ish at the time, that I thought certainly he couldn't be making it up, that it must actually be so. I walked sometimes those days, and decided in my heart that I would try to do as Craig did. I wasn't very successful at first, but as I walked for three years in college to school and back and two years of graduate school

I have over the years remembered Craig's words and tried to develop the same habit. Inasmuch as I have been successful, I have experienced a love for the Lord's world in the ordinary places I pass each day, and have been able to observe the small changes in season and place as gifts from God. This past year as a high school teacher I have tried to use my morning commuting time to think about individual students who are struggling and what I can do to help them. Often these thoughts turn into prayers, conversations with God about what can be done-- and I try to remember these prayers to be ones of gratitude as well as pleading. I try to express gratitude for how beautiful the sun is, rising over the San Francisco Bay, bright orange these days with the smoke from the California fires. Thanks for the comment, Craig.

--Reija Matheson