I was out for an evening walk and hadn’t seen wildlife for a long time near where I live. I stopped and was talking with a neighbor in a normal volume when this mama deer and her two fawn suddenly came running out of the woods, looked over at us and put on a dance for our viewing pleasure, and then starting eating apples left by another neighbor. Of course I grabbed my phone and zoomed in. When I looked at the picture I took, I thought how adorable because they were all posed alike, side by side, eating. If I had asked them to do that, I would have been hard pressed for the same response! LOL.
What does peace look like? In that moment I think adorable fit the description of peace for those deer. They weren’t afraid of us being less than 30 feet from them. They were in tune with their surroundings but chose to continue eating. Even later when I walked a little closer to return home, they weren’t concerned. They walked a little farther away but didn’t run off.
Is our peace adorable??? If it’s true peace, it should look adorable to an onlooker. Peace is something we all want in our hearts and lives, though some will never admit it. If an onlooker sees turmoil and unrest, they won’t see adorable and won’t be interested in what we have.
Inspiring. The dictionary defines adorable as inspiring great affection, delightful, or charming. That deer family for me was definitely delightful and inspiring. To think they could have been skittish, run and hid, or worse yet chase me away. There are people who inspire me by their words and actions, and I pray that I am an inspiration to others as well. Some people have a charming demeanor and are beautiful on the outside, but it’s the inside that really makes a person what they are. If the inside and outside match, great! If not, there’s a disconnect that short circuits peace.
“Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain,
but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.”
Proverbs 31:30, ESV
Charming. Liz Curtis Higgs in her blog posts to beware of princess charming. I highly recommend reading that link because she has some very good thoughts about being a charming woman. If you’re a man reading this post, that’s Ok, read it anyway because some men can be charming but perhaps not always in the right way.
What is adorable or charming or inspiring to you may not be so to others. There’s been many times that someone commented such a sentiment to me about a person or thing, and I’ve had to (at least inwardly) roll my eyes and think really? because I didn’t share the same sentiments. That’s not to say that either they or I are wrong in our sentiments, but that they don’t have to always be the same. I struggle to come up with a good response, though, when the person who thinks something is adorable asks me what I think. When what I’m seeing is not adorable, charming, or inspiring to me, I can’t be rude and say no, so I try to smile, or say it’s cute or something that doesn’t agree but isn’t a lie.
That reminds me of someone I was shopping with. As we walked along, I would admire a picture or some other item simply because I thought it was pretty. They said, but where would you put it? What would you use it for? After a few times of this response, I finally said that I was just admiring the beauty of the item but it didn’t mean I wanted one for myself. People’s intentions and responses can be so different and be misunderstood. If that person took me literally when I admired the deer family, I probably would have really rolled my eyes and laughed at them!
Back to adorable peace! How can peace be anything but adorable or charming or inspiring when it brings such joy and calm to us? Peace is the absence of stress and strife. Now that is adorable!
100 Posts
I’m approaching 100 posts since I started this blog in January. I enjoy writing, but I would love to hear from my readers. I can’t tell if anyone is even reading the posts. Do you like them? Are they pertinent? Too long? Too short? Boring? Please drop a comment in the box below.