Nature

My best self

I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes. ~e.e. cummings

How often I have stood in the meadow and gazed at this beloved view. It is part of me, I consider myself part owner anyway, having been blessed enough to have grown up near Yosemite. We went there every year. How grateful I continue to be for my parents, who instilled in me a deep love and appreciation of nature. Those memories have carried me through many tough times. I can’t help but smile when I think of all those trips……so thrilled at the first view of those magnificent cliffs. Sometimes, unable to contain our excitement, we would pull over and run outside just to get a whiff of the sweet pine-air.
 
I have always found my best self close to nature. I really become the person I most want to be. I become at ease and the self confidence that alludes me nearly all of the time, comes to life in it. Much of the time I am ill at ease in the world, never sure of my place in it. But there, standing in a meadow, or on the shore listening to the crash of the waves, my best me comes out. I like myself there. Nature beckons me, invites me to be a part of it…..asking nothing in return except to come and enjoy.
 
Feel the peace of it, relax in it, and thank God for His marvelous creation.
 
Nature itself glorifies God as nothing else can. People many times fail to do that, but nature never does.
 
“God writes the gospel not in the Bible alone, but on trees and flowers and clouds and stars.” ~Author unknown, commonly attributed to Martin Luther
 
Stroll over to Moonboat Cafe and see the post that inspired my own post today……..thank you Cassandra!

The Desert Speaks

For the LORD’s portion is His people;
Jacob is the place of His inheritance.
“He found him in a desert land
And in the wasteland, a howling wilderness;
He encircled him, He instructed him,
He kept him as the apple of His eye.
Deuteronomy 32:9,10

Monday was a tough day……It was a day where months, actually years of stress caught up and culminated in words that have been bottled up far too long. It had to be said……and she had to get out. So we went…..fast. Destination: Anywhere but there. Caregivers of the very demanding understand this need to escape.

Who knows whether the words stuck. They were probably forgotten within 10 minutes.That is the thing with Alzheimers, you never know what sticks and what doesn’t. She is not at the stage where she would be in danger alone……yet, although that will come. So we went.

No one tells you. The rules change daily. What is okay one day is met with anger and denial the next. A day trip was necessary, crucial…..sanity was precariously balanced on the edge of a very fine line.

Grabbing my camera I said, “Let’s go to Globe, they have old buildings and it’s not too far away.”

And God gave one of His unexpected little surprises, well actually two. A call came on her cell while we were driving around……cousin Sandra, two states away. A welcome voice from someone who understands the situation and everyone involved. Healing balm for a hurting heart.

Driving along I saw some pretty plants and a sign that said, “Botanical Gardens.” We stopped and found a neat surprise there, a place called  Besh Ba Gowah “Place of Metal” Archaeological Park. The name is referring to the mining that took place there. It was an old Salado pueblo ruins that had been excavated and partially reconstructed.

We paid our 4 dollars and were invited to watch the 15 minute video, which we skipped. My camera was itching in my hands….God gave a gift……Sometimes He speaks in desert blooms. It was like He was saying……….”This is for you………”

and so is this……..

This one reminded me of a fire-cracker…..

As we walked through, we heard the Spirit speak in birdsong…..saw the glory of Him in the blooms that even thorns do not prevent…..
heard His whisper on the breeze,
Telling us all the while that He loved us and longed to give us rest……
In His Presence……
it was very good.
Thank you, my friend. I am so glad you insisted we get away.
You knew how much I wanted a camera day.  
It was one of those God things that it turned out like it did.

Butterflies and Caterpillars

 So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now! This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! 2 Corinthians 5:16,17
I was reading something  in a book titled, Classic Christianity by Bob George that struck a chord with me the other day. He was talking about how we walk around defeated because we have failed to recognize who we actually are in Christ. I think there is some truth to this. Sometimes in our efforts not to appear better than anyone else, we walk around like caterpillars instead of the butterflies we are. Who ever heard of a butterfly walking around in the dirt when they could easily fly, in fact, were made to fly?
It’s a delicate balance. We want to be accessible, approachable, and still we have to be “in the world but not of it.….”Jesus was the master at this.  He was equally as comfortable in His skin in the Temple or at the home of “tax collectors and sinners.” Neither atmosphere changed who He was, and yet He made Himself approachable to Chief Priest and Prostitute alike.
While the Apostle Paul was fully aware that he wasn’t exempt from falling into sin, and that many times he was unsuccessful in his efforts to do the right thing, he also never forgot who he was in Christ. He didn’t live a defeated life! He didn’t let his failures keep him from what He knew was sure victory at the end of the race! He kept his eyes on the prize.
We hold within us the power of Almighty God in the form of His Spirit……..the same Spirit that moved across the waters before creation…..also the one who raised Jesus from the grave and broke the power of sin and death forever….That Spirit!
We should never forget what Jesus has saved us from, but we should also remember that when we rose up out of that water from Baptism, we became a new creation!
So enjoy your flight today……and as they say on every flight, feel free to move about the cabin…..

It’s All About the Light

 Jesus spoke to the people once more and said, “I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won’t have to walk in darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life.” John 8:12
Taking great pictures is all about the light. Finding it, chasing it, capturing it. And not just any light either, the right light. I am finding with my photos that either I don’t have enough light or I have too much. Once in a while I get it right on the money, and at this point it is a fluke when I do because I don’t know what I am doing…..yet. Right now I am trying to figure out how to get just the right amount of light in pictures I take at sunset, so they don’t look washed out. 
Jesus talked a lot about light. In fact, He was the light. When we find Him we find everything. We don’t have to chase Him, because He already made the first move. He died so that we could find it, find Him. The Bible says in John 1:4: 
 “In him was life, and that life was the light of men.”
I am so glad I don’t have to run all over the place to find Him. He is right here with me at all times……..When life comes crashing in, I can go to a quiet place and find Him. And when I can’t get to that quiet place, I feel the stillness of His Spirit in my soul. I carry Him around and He allows it, wants it.
That blows my mind.
And He leads me places…….Sometimes He leads me walking. The other day while I was mulling over everything in my photo book, trying to make sense of it all and get my brain to work, I went out for a short walk around the park. I sensed Him saying, “See what you would have missed if you hadn’t come out here?”
Taking a walk is like letting the light in…….but only if you open your eyes to what He wants to show you. I confess, sometimes I have walked and been so upset I haven’t seen a thing.
But I don’t like walks like that, I want the other kind.
Peace in Him, Lori
photo courtesy of public domain pictures

Interesting Bible Facts

Halleluiah! I have just gotten to the point in Job where God finally speaks, right after Elihu “defends” God, as if He needed any defending…..

“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you know so much.Who determined its dimensions and stretched out the surveying line? What supports its foundations, and who laid its cornerstone as the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?” GOD

God uses a little sarcasm here, I love it!

Here are a few interesting facts I found…..


At a time when it was believed that the earth sat on a large animal or a giant (1500 B.C.), the Bible spoke of the earth’s free float in space: “He…hangs the earth upon nothing” (Job 26:7)

God told Job in 1500 B.C.: “Can you send lightnings, that they may go, and say to you, Here we are?” (Job 38:35). The Bible here is making what appears to be a scientifically ludicrous statement—that light can be sent, and then manifest itself in speech. But did you know that radio waves travel at the speed of light? This is why you can have instantaneous wireless communication with someone on the other side of the earth. Science didn’t discover this until 1864 when “British scientist James Clerk Maxwell suggested that electricity and light waves were two forms of the same thing” (Modern Century Illustrated Encyclopedia).
Science has discovered that stars emit radio waves, which are received on earth as a high pitch. God mentioned this in Job 38:7: “When the morning stars sang together…”

Medical science has only recently discovered that blood-clotting in a newborn reaches its peak on the eighth day, then drops. The Bible consistently says that a baby must be circumcised on the eighth day.

And here are two very strange facts about two events that have nothing to do with the Bible, but that I can count on happening as surely as I breathe….

Event #1:

I will invariably look at the clock at the precise same time every morning when I get ready for work: 4:28
This happens so often I am really starting to worry about the significance of the number. I always think the same disgruntled thought…..”How did it get to be that time already…..?”

Event #2

My feet (and everthing else) gets so warm at 2:00 AM that I have to throw socks and covers across the room. This is no mystery to most women of my age. The cats are no longer surprised by this……they stir briefly in hopes that in my confusion and distressed state that I will feed them early, and then go back to sleep.

I wake up about 1 hour later, cold.

Have a blessed and wonderful day, everyone!

A Sparrow Story

Paul Harvey relates a modern parable about a religious skeptic who worked as a farmer:

One raw winter night the man heard an irregular thumping sound against the kitchen storm door. He went to a window and watched as tiny, shivering sparrows, attracted to the evident warmth inside, beat in vain against the glass.

Touched, the farmer bundled up and trudged through fresh snow to open the barn door for the struggling birds. He turned on the lights and tossed some hay in the corner. But the sparrows, which had scattered in all directions when he emerged from the house, hid in the darkness, afraid.

The man tried various tactics to get them into the barn. He laid down a trail of Saltine cracker crumbs to direct them. He tried circling behind the birds to drive them to the barn. Nothing worked. He, a huge, alien creature, had terrified them; the birds couldn’t comprehend that he actually desired to help. The farmer withdrew to his house and watched the doomed sparrows through a window.

As he stared, a thought hit him like lightning from a clear blue sky: If only I could become a bird – one of them – just for a moment. Then I wouldn’t frighten them so. I could show them the way to warmth and safety.

At the same moment, another thought dawned on him. He grasped the reason Jesus was born.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. John 1:14

Finding God in the Landscape

Man’s heart away from nature becomes hard. ~Standing Bear
“Praise the LORD from the earth, you great sea creatures and all ocean depths, lightning and hail, snow and clouds, stormy winds that do his bidding, you mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars, wild animals and all cattle, small creatures and flying birds…..” Psalm 148:7-10
Last evening I went for a walk, I just had to get out…..see a bit of the mountain silhouette against the sky. The Lord originally placed us in a garden, I believe we were meant to gaze on vistas, sit beside still waters. I think when we forget our place in the landscape we go a little bit crazy. We wonder why we get so angry at little things, like when something gets stuck on a clothes hanger and we break the hanger trying to remove it.
That is always a clue to me that I need to go out and get back in touch with a bit of nature……remember my place in it, remember how big God is and how constant. I just get a bit lost sometimes. It strikes me again that the life that most of us are living is unnatural, I really don’t think we were meant for all this chaos.
Our world today is filled with noise, movement, activity and stress. Sometimes it just all sneaks up on us,  
like it snuck up on me last night. I saw the cars whizzing by the freeway between the houses, but beyond that was the mountain……
Nature is the compass that God uses to set me right. Sometimes it doesn’t even take a very big dose. I think when we forget to notice nature, we forget to notice God.

photos from public domain pictures

The ways God speaks……

….”But as for me, it is good to be near God. I have made the Sovereign LORD my refuge; I will tell of all your deeds.” Psalm 73:28

I love this verse, because David is not speaking about God, but actually to God……God’s nearness is something we can actually experience. The book of James says, “Come near to God and he will come near to you.” Imagine, a God we can actually have a personal experience of nearness to. The beauty of how God speaks to us is revealed in the many different ways He speaks to us as individuals.

The personal ways………

I have written before about the robin appearing at dawn on the awful day after my husband died, and the snow white dove appearing on my parents window sill as they were praying.

I have been lamenting the loss of my little cactus wren. When the cactus came down, “wrenny” flew the coop. Cactus wrens are very industrious and fun to watch. They are always busy, always working. I would see him hopping up and down the sidewalk, collecting nest material, finding food.

They have a very interesting call and I have missed seeing him perched on top of the Saquaro. Usually I wake with the mourning doves, their soft cooing has become my morning “collect.” I have grown very used to the sound of them accompanying my prayer. Yesterday I had a different visitor. He was perched right above my neighbors door and sang there non-stop for about 30 minutes. I have no idea what kind of bird he was, but he was there, singing God’s praises to me loud and clear.

I heard him this morning also, a good distance away.

But yesterday he was there for me, and so was He, in the lowly form of a little bird.

God speaks, we only need to have hearts and ears to hear.

“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” James 1:17

In your time of worship and reflection today, please take a moment to pray for the people of Japan……

God’s early light….

I do love Your dawn Lord,
I feel as if I am partaking in somekind of miracle…..
something just between You and me.
And the birds.
There is something about when the first light of pink
touches the sky, earth’s first waking.
Something in me grieves when I miss it,
when I am somewhere I can’t see it.
It’s like I’ve missed something important,
like a miracle.
Today I heard the first mourning dove,
which was answered by another close by.
Maybe that is why I feel a kinship
with the birds, they wake up singing.
They know it’s a miracle too.
Lord, I thank you because everyday
is resurrection day after all.
The earth turns, wakes.
And it will not happen just this way
again….

Taken from my iphone, Lodi, California…..

"Thar’s gold in them thar hills…."

I lift up my eyes to the mountains—

where does my help come from?
My help comes from the LORD,
the Maker of heaven and earth.
He will not let your foot slip—
he who watches over you will not slumber;
indeed, he who watches over Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.
The LORD watches over you—
the LORD is your shade at your right hand;
the sun will not harm you by day,
nor the moon by night.
The LORD will keep you from all harm—
he will watch over your life;
the LORD will watch over your coming and going
both now and forevermore.
Psalm 121

I get to have this view every evening when I come home, the beautiful and mysterious Superstition Mountains. Their presence comforts me somehow, they are so strong, so steadfast, so solid. I always think of this Psalm when I gaze up at its beauty, especially when the last rays of the sun turn it a deep magenta.

Somewhere up there, the legend says, the Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine is hidden. It was named after German Immigrant Jacob Waltz, and said to be the most famous lost mine in the U.S. Many have looked for the mine since the late 1800’s and so far it has never been found.
Moses found treasure one day on a mountain. He didn’t find gold, but something much better, he found God. When I look at these mountains I always think of Moses coming down with those tablets, his face glowing like the sun…..

I can always find God on the mountain.

One particular evening when the sun was doing its magenta magic, I was standing in our community clubhouse. I approached the door because from there you get an unblocked view of the mountain range. Standing in the doorway was a sweet elderly lady who is very sick. She was going home early because she didn’t feel well that night. She paused at the door way, looked up and caught her breath at the magnificent view and said in a hushed voice, “I think God lives up there.”

I said, “Yes, I think He does too!”