What Happened Here

Welcome to Scattered Moments. These are brief reflections on faith and the quiet places where grace appears. There's a passage in the book of Joshua where God's people are told to gather stones, not for decoration, but for remembrance. When your children ask, what do these stones mean? You tell them what God has done. We all have places like that. Places we return to in our minds, or if we're able, with our feet. A field, an old church, a quiet cafe, a stretch of road no one else would notice. Ordinary places that became sacred. Places where something broke or something healed. Places where heaven felt near, and over time, without even trying, we gather stones there. We stack them quietly in our memory. A rescue, a grief, a moment of clarity, a whisper from God. And one day someone will ask, What happened here? A while back I returned to one of mine. It was a place for my college years, a quiet season where I spent long days alone. It was a strange kind of forming, part sorrow, part awakening. And if I had to explain it, if I had to answer the question, what happened here? I think I would say it like this. I tasted loneliness and I found it pleasing. I dreamed of God and I washed the floors. I listened to nothing and everything that surrounded it. I swam at midnight, and I saw the moon drift over Louisiana clouds. I wailed. But no one heard me but the owl and the possum. I was never more alive and never more dead. It was transcendent. It was holy. And somehow it was one of the best seasons of my life. Thomas Merton once wrote, In solitude, we discover that we are not alone. We spend so much of our time and our lives trying to escape solitude. We fill it, we mute it, we outrun it. But there are things God will only say when the noise is gone. There are parts of your soul that only wake up when no one else is around. Solitude is not the absence of life. It's often where life finally begins. And so we gather stones. Not to live in the past, but to remember what God has done there. To remind ourselves, and one day, maybe our children, that God meets us. Not only in crowds and celebrations, but in the quiet rooms, empty fields, and long lonely summers. And when they ask, what happened here? You can tell them God was there. And so was I. Take care. Notice the scattered moments and cheer the grace.