Heidi Viars

When I walked my old trail today, I heard the stranger. Not his words, but in what he left for me to find.

It’s been months since our last wordless chat. We stopped leaving messages after the snow fell and covered all the things that made us communicate. Today, I found a coffee mug, a tiny Statue of Liberty and a white rubber bracelet.

I picked up his mug and placed my message inside, dried flowers, a bouquet of last summer’s blossoms filled with seeds.

“Hope is around the corner.”

I grabbed a couple of bigger sticks and weaved them together with flimsy grass until they held in place and shaped a cross. I had no problem pushing it into the soggy, spring ground.

“Easter is not cancelled.”

He had arranged the bracelet, the mug and the statue to leave me a clear directive:

“Pray for New York!”

I sat on the bench. As I listened to a nearby whooping crane and a couple of chatty mallards, I prayed.

Over the past several seasons, we have become more creative and even bolder in the way we communicate. I suppose, speaking hope and truth into each other’s lives doesn’t always have to be in person.

(If you like to read how it all started, click here)

“Lord, help us hear the cry of our neighbor’s heart, even when we can’t be together!”

“For though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit,
rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of
your faith in Christ.”
Colossians 2:5 (ESV)
~
(Pictures and thoughts, Heidi Viars, 2020)