Four-year old Ivy and I stepped out onto a sunny street, plastic bags in hand to collect all the unnoticed treasures of a small-town neighborhood in the early spring. It was 72 degrees, and we ventured without jackets, without the itchy and sometimes cumbersome articles of clothing that winter forces on us. Just lightweight long-sleeves, jeans, and tennis shoes that were anxious to move.

As soon as we emerged from the house, we each had to stop and exclaim how nice it was outside. This wasn’t the kind of walk that one does for exercise. Nothing about it got my heart rate up or caused my muscles to burn. It was a wandering. A meandering that never made a straight line from point A to point B. We stopped for rocks. We talked about trees and used Ivy’s kid-sized binoculars to spy on birds that twittered from high branches. If any neighbors were concerned about their dandelion troubles, no need. We gathered the bright yellow blooms and held them like one holds newborn babies, delicately, with appreciation, with a little bit of awe, and we marveled at the way that some yards were overtaken by tiny, intricate purple blooms, beautiful little weeds.

It was the kind of experience that humans are sometimes lucky enough to have with small children: time seemed to freeze for just a little while. It didn’t matter where we were or where we weren’t. We didn’t need to rush or worry or even think about anything beyond the immediate pleasure of being together, noticing the things that we rarely stop to pay attention to.

In the peace of this unknown span of time, it dawned on me that every little thing that we paused briefly to admire and adore was placed in its exact spot by the God of the universe, who clothes every flower and knows every bird’s song. God is intimately acquainted with each tiny purple bloom, and He knows the exact patch of dirt in the yard where each one was born. And, even more amazingly, inside each house that sits behind those tiny purple blooms, He knows how many individual hairs sit on each head.

We wandered and stopped and started and examined things up close and squinted at things far away, and in all of it, what I happened to remember is this: God is wonderfully and perfectly in charge of everything He made, including Ivy and me.

We walked into the house a little bit hot, pushing long sleeves up to our elbows as we emptied our bags of treasures on the table–dirt and rocks and bright blooms and tiny ants and ruffled leaves that made us feel like sneezing. We brought the smells of earth and root inside and breathed them in like a memory, and I wondered how long I would remember the truth that moved me in our hour outside of time. God is beautifully present in all He has made, and He cares about the little things.