It’s truly amazing what a long hack, with a prayerful attitude and John 15 in the back of your head, at sunrise, can do for the soul.

Arwen and I headed out at about 6:30 this morning, before the sun had dared to show its face.

As we started down the hill, it was just slipping into the sky from behind the hill and the brooding woods.

The world became rose-tinted; its edges softened, illuminated by golden light. It was beautiful, it was breathtaking, it was pure, and it was deeply humbling.

The challenges of running a not-so-little-anymore stableyard can mount dauntingly at the beginning of each day, leaving me as thunderstruck as the traveller in Psalm 121. Stressed. Burned out. Hopeless. Exhausted. Complaining. Selfish.

But like the traveller, today I’m reminded of where my help comes from.

On a scale of one to God, none of today’s challenges are anything more than a speck in the face of majesty.

I’m reminded of how vastly, limitlessly, with how much abandon and abundance I have been blessed. Wouldn’t it have been enough if Christ had just died and lived again for me? It is enough. Why then am I so spoiled? Why sunrises and rustling fields of ripening maize and shadow-silent little duiker buck slipping across the paths and the sweeping expanse of Highveld magnificence and a good, grey mare who never quits? Why do I, who deserves only death, not only gain life and redemption and peace, but also beauty and grace and friendship?

There can only be one answer to such an impossible question: an answer utterly complicated in its very perfect simplicity.

It’s because I am loved.

Glory to the King.