There are certain things I expect to see when I go to Florida. The ocean, obviously. Palm trees. Beautiful sunrises over the water. Maybe a dolphin if we're lucky. And if we're really lucky, perhaps a manatee.

What I wasn't expecting was George.

We stayed in a beautiful Airbnb right on the water during our trip to Florida. One of my favorite parts of the week was getting up early in the morning and sitting with my mother overlooking the water. We would watch the sun come up and listen to the sounds of the ocean while the rest of the house slowly began to wake up. We spotted a few dolphins during the week, and my kids even managed to see a manatee, although somehow I missed it.

But there was another form of wildlife that made absolutely certain I didn't miss him.

He was a snowy egret, and it didn't take us long to realize that this particular bird was quite comfortable around the house. In fact, he seemed a little too comfortable. I took a picture of him and sent it to the owner of the Airbnb and asked if, by any chance, he had a name.

He did.

His name was George.

Apparently George had taken quite a liking to the property, although I'm not sure "liking" was quite the right word. George seemed to believe he had some sort of standing reservation.

Every morning, he would show up outside the window and wait to be fed. He didn't squawk. He didn't make a scene. He simply stood there and stared at us with the quiet confidence of someone who knew that breakfast would eventually be served. And eventually, it was.

After receiving a few scraps, George would fly away and go about whatever business occupies the day of a snowy egret. But then dinner would come.

And so would George.

The house had a beautiful sunroom surrounded by windows, with a table in the middle where we often ate our meals. We would sit around the table eating dinner while George stood on the other side of the glass watching us, with his beak against the window. And watching us. And watching us.

George was remarkably patient. He apparently understood that if he stood there long enough, eventually one of us would become so overcome with guilt that we would get up from the table and find him something to eat.

His strategy was remarkably effective.

A few days into the trip, George acquired a sidekick. A seagull began showing up with him. George tolerated the seagull, although "tolerated" is probably the best word for their relationship. He didn't seem particularly thrilled about sharing his territory, or his dinner, but he allowed the seagull to hang around.

And then, on about the third day, things became even more interesting.

A great blue heron arrived.

Unlike George, the heron wasn't particularly interested in the little scraps we were handing out. A bird that size really needed an entire fish. But he did seem extremely interested in everything else happening on the property. He walked slowly around the yard, back and forth, watching George, watching the seagull, watching us, and generally giving the impression that someone needed to be supervising the entire operation.

So I named him the Sheriff.

By the middle of the week, we had assembled the strangest little cast of characters: George the snowy egret waiting outside the window for breakfast and dinner, his somewhat unwelcome seagull sidekick hanging around hoping for leftovers, and the Sheriff patrolling the property making sure everyone stayed in line.

We loved them.

At one point, we accidentally left the door to the sunroom open. When we came back, there was the Sheriff standing on one of the chairs as if he had every right in the world to be there. Clearly these birds were not the least bit bothered by humans. In fact, judging from how comfortable they were around the house, I had a feeling we probably weren't the first vacationers who had invited them a little too close.

Pretty soon we weren't watching the water nearly as much for dolphins or manatees anymore. We were too distracted by the antics of George, his sidekick, and the Sheriff. We started looking for them in the morning. We noticed when one of them was missing. We watched their little disagreements and laughed at their personalities.

We had planned this trip to Florida with all kinds of things in mind. We were going to snorkel and see wildlife. We were going to spend time at the beach. We were even going to ride some roller coasters. Hanging out with a snowy egret, a seagull, and a great blue heron had definitely not made the itinerary.

And yet somehow they became one of my favorite parts of the trip.

It's probably a good thing I don't live in that house because I'm fairly certain George and I would develop a terribly unhealthy relationship. I would feed him constantly, George would become increasingly convinced that I existed solely to provide his meals, and none of it would be particularly good for either one of us.

But for one week, I thoroughly enjoyed him.

And I couldn't help but wonder if perhaps God did too.

Sometimes I think we look for God only in the big things. We look for Him to answer the prayer, solve the problem, open the door, give us direction, or teach us some profound spiritual lesson. Even when we talk about God's blessings, we tend to think about the significant things He has provided.

But what about laughter?  What if sometimes God places something in our lives for no other reason than because He knows it will make us smile?

I don't know that George needed to teach me anything profound. Maybe the Sheriff wasn't there to illustrate some great biblical truth. Maybe a seagull tagging along behind an irritated snowy egret wasn't a metaphor for anything at all.

Maybe they were simply funny.

Maybe God, who created snowy egrets and great blue herons and seagulls, and gave each of them their strange little personalities, knew exactly how much we would enjoy having them around for a week.

There was an enormous ocean right outside our window. Dolphins occasionally passed through it. Somewhere out there was at least one manatee that apparently everyone in my family except me managed to see.  But some of my favorite memories from that week involved a snowy egret, an unwanted seagull sidekick, and a great blue heron to patrol the property.

None of them were on the itinerary.

Maybe some of God's sweetest gifts aren't.

God Didn't Have To Make The World Interesting

God could have created a completely functional world. Birds could all have been brown. Flowers could all have looked alike. Food could have provided the nutrition we needed without having much flavor. There didn't have to be sunsets or changing leaves or dolphins jumping out of the ocean. There certainly didn't need to be a snowy egret with enough personality to convince a houseful of vacationers that he was entitled to breakfast every morning.

And yet look at what God made.

There are thousands upon thousands of different kinds of birds. There are creatures living at the bottom of the ocean that most human beings will never see. There are flowers growing in places where hardly anyone will ever notice them. There are colors and sounds and tastes and textures everywhere.

Creation isn't merely functional. It's extravagant.

And I think that tells us something about the Creator.

Psalm 104 is a passage of Scripture where the writer seems almost overwhelmed by everything God has made. He writes about springs flowing through valleys where wild animals drink. He describes birds nesting beside the waters and singing among the branches. He talks about grass growing for cattle, plants producing food, the moon marking the seasons, lions roaming at night, and the sea "teeming with creatures beyond number."

Then in verse 24, he seems to stop and take it all in:

"How many are your works, Lord! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures."

I wonder if I've spent so much time looking for what God is trying to teach me that sometimes I've forgotten to notice what He has simply given me to enjoy.

Our lives are busy. I think that's true in much of the world, but it seems especially true in our culture here in the US. We place tremendous value on productivity. We need to be accomplishing something. We need to be working, improving, answering, planning, organizing, producing, or checking something else off the list.

Even our rest can become productive. We track our steps. We schedule our vacations. We make itineraries for our free time. We take our phones everywhere so that even when nothing is demanding our attention, something can.

Somewhere along the way, I think many of us forget how to wonder.

When I was a child, my parents bought us a trampoline, probably in hopes that my brothers and I would wear off some of our seemingly endless supply of energy. This was long before trampolines came surrounded by nets and covered with safety pads. Ours was simply a trampoline sitting out in the yard.

Sometimes I would climb onto it and not jump at all.  I would lie flat on my back and look at the sky.  I would watch the clouds move and try to decide what they looked like. Sometimes one looked like an animal. Another looked like a face. If my brothers or friends were lying there with me, we would point them out to each other and debate what we saw.

"That one looks like a dog."

"No, it doesn't. It looks like a dragon."

Then, while we were arguing about it, the wind would stretch it into something completely different.

I could lose a surprising amount of time lying on that trampoline looking at the sky.  There wasn't a deep spiritual lesson in it. I wasn't studying meteorology. I wasn't accomplishing anything. No one was going to ask me later how many clouds I had observed or whether I had used my trampoline time efficiently.

I was simply enjoying something God had made.  Maybe that's part of what makes childhood so special, and maybe it's part of what makes adulthood so hard.

Somewhere between lying on a trampoline watching clouds and becoming adults with calendars and responsibilities, we can lose some of our sense of wonder. We stop staring at clouds because there are emails to answer. We don't have time to watch a bird because we're looking at our phones. We hurry past things that once would have fascinated us because we have an appointment and we're already five minutes behind.

We become very good at being productive.  I'm not sure we become equally good at being delighted.

And then along came George.

For one week, a snowy egret, his slightly annoying seagull sidekick, and a great blue heron I had appointed Sheriff of the property gave us something to watch.

There was nothing productive about it.

We didn't learn anything particularly useful. We weren't accomplishing anything when we stood at the window watching George attempt to guilt us into feeding him. Our jaws dropped when the Sheriff marched across the yard, wandered into the sunroom and climbed onto a chair.

We stopped because it delighted us.  And somewhere in the middle of watching that strange little posse of birds, I think I remembered something I used to know while lying on a trampoline looking at clouds.

Not every moment has to accomplish something.  Sometimes we can simply look.  Sometimes we can wonder.  Sometimes we can laugh.  Sometimes we can enjoy what God has made simply because He made it.

Psalm 104:31 says, "May the glory of the Lord endure forever; may the Lord rejoice in his works."

And I wonder if perhaps He enjoys watching us rejoice in it too.