Category: Mountains

More abundantly

On By Charis PsalloIn Mountains, Photography, Sky, Trees and forests, Water8 Comments

Photos: Yesterday I had time to go out with my camera for a while. The skies were overcast in town, but I saw some interesting light to the west so I pointed myself in that direction. I asked the Lord for a bit of light, both in my life, and on the hills so I might get one good shot. I followed the sun westward and ended up on a logging road that led to St. Marys Lake and the headwaters of the St. Marys River, then circled back by Marysville Falls at twilight. He supplied abundantly more than I asked. Out of this abundance I share with you.

Can you see the house in the above photo? It puts the size of these trees into perspective.

…and many more, which I may post at a later date…

Oh, wait. I have to include this one, just because I don’t think you will see community bulletin boards like this one in Toronto or Pittsburgh or Mumbai:

Hope: Vision-led endurance

On By Charis PsalloIn Mountains, Photography, Trees and forests5 Comments

Photo: I waited all through a dark, dreary, rainy day to be able to go out for a walk. Finally, in the early evening, the sun broke through.

This is going to sound weird because, well, it is weird.

About 4 ½ years ago we had a particularly difficult week in our family. We received three bits of bad news, any one of which meant a change in lifestyle –and all of them negative. Two were diagnoses of incurable degenerative diseases and one was about a business my husband put a lot of effort and time into, which literally went south.

Then I had a strange experience. I awoke hearing a voice with a BBC accent saying, “Follow 228 ban our tires.” It sounded like a commercial that adds a voice-over saying, “For further information go to www dot…”

It was so clear I grabbed a pen and pad and wrote it down, like it was a phone message.

In the morning I looked at it and felt rather silly. What an odd thing to write down. I never told anyone, but secretly, later in the day I googled it.

Nothing. I put the experience down to stress.

The next day I was thinking about the strange note to self when I remembered the voice had a British accent and in the UK tires is spelled tyres.

I googled it again using the “proper” spelling.

This time I followed the trail to a British bicycle shop site selling tyres which were featured in a click-able box at the top. On the side of the page was a box with an advertisement for Ray Ban glasses. Featured in the center was a photo and description of a head lamp for a racing bike. It must have been for very serious bikers because it cost 228 pounds.

Here’s the odd thing. The lamp was an LED Vision lamp made by the Hope company and called the Endurance model. What jumped out at me when I looked at the page was this:

Hope: Vision-LED Endurance.

As a person who suffered from depression for many years I know that living without a sense of hope is hell, but I wasn’t sure what hope really was. I knew it didn’t mean “a dream is a wish your heart makes” or “any dream will do”. I believe God was giving me a puzzle to solve in which the answer was a definition of hope, “vision-led endurance.” The Bible says without a vision (I believe the word there is a God-given active rhema word) the people perish. Hope means endurance that is attached to a promise from God. Hope gives a reason to live and a purpose with which to fight discouragement.

God is faithful. Those three problems which loomed so large that week are no longer big problems. One was healed out-right, quite miraculously, shortly afterward; one became less threatening when God had an unusual creative solution and is much improved, (hubs is not wheel-chair bound, in fact, he jogs six kilometres nearly every day); and the project is back on the rails –with much more reliable partners this time.

Jesus never ceases to amaze me.

Messengers

On By Charis PsalloIn Art, Mountains, Sky, Trees and forests, Water2 Comments

Bless the Lord, O you his angels,
    you mighty ones who do his word,
    obeying the voice of his word!
 Bless the Lord, all his hosts,
    his ministers, who do his will!
Bless the Lord, all his works,
    in all places of his dominion.
Bless the Lord, O my soul!

(Psalm 103:20-22)

Blue Shadows on the Trail

On By Charis PsalloIn Mountains, Photography, Sky8 Comments

Photos:Sunset on the Cowboy Trail last night

Yes, that is snow.

One of my great joys is listening to my son sing lullabies to his son. He does the best cover of “Blue Shadows on the Trail” that I have ever heard. That boy –OK, man– can sing.

Thank you God. You are good. I have lived to see my children’s children.

Author! Author!

On By Charis PsalloIn Mountains, Photography, Trees and forests, Uncategorized6 Comments

And my husband wonders why it takes me so much longer to drive this route than Google maps says it should take.

 

And all the trees will clap their hands.

The Lord make His face shine upon you

On By Charis PsalloIn Mountains, Photography, Sky, Trees and forests2 Comments

Photo: Somewhere between Pincher Creek and Beauvais Lake this morning

 

“The Lord bless you and keep you;
 The Lord make His face shine upon you,
And be gracious to you;
 The Lord lift up His countenance upon you,
And give you peace”

Feast in the Valley

On By Charis PsalloIn Mountains, Photography, Water6 Comments

Photo: A visual feast in the valley on the way to my daughter’s house

EXPRESSIONS Look without! Behold the beauty of the day, The shout of color to glad color, rocks and trees, and sun and seas, and wind and sky: All these are God’s expression, art work of His hand, which men must love ere they can understand. ~ Richard Hovey

Go Left

On By Charis PsalloIn Mountains, Uncategorized7 Comments

Photo: Highway 3

Lots of young people have asked me, “How do I find God’s direction for my life? How do I know God’s perfect will for me?”

My standard answer now is, “Put yourself in gear and get out of the driveway.”

I learned to drive on my Dad’s old Merc. It did not have power steering and sometimes it was ridiculously hard to turn the wheels on that thing when it was at a standstill. Sometimes I thought, in the process of learning to park that land-locked boat, it would have taken less effort to get out and push it sideways into a parking spot. Getting it back out of a tight spot was just as hard. It’s tough to steer a stationary vehicle. Just start moving. Sometimes God’s directions are simply, “Go. Move already.”

Like many people I have wanted to understand the eternal ramifications of every decision before I made it. What if I went to College A and the person I was supposed to marry went to College B -or Q or U. What if I missed God’s perfect will for my life because I took a job in Moose Jaw and destiny awaited in Tuktoyuktuk? What if it was God’s will for me to study Hebrew and I studied Greek? What if I missed my calling while I was on the phone talking to my friend about paint colours for the bathroom? To be honest I even hated not knowing which lane I needed to be in 200 km.s down the road.

Even after I learned to give God credit for being a little more flexible than I was. I stewed over things like travel plans, wanting to have a carefully thought out printed itinerary and reservations in place months before I packed far too much just-in-case stuff in my suitcase.

It may be a sign of how much work God has done on me that my idea of a vacation now is a blank calendar and an open road. This is what I have learned: God is creative and not reactive. He is relentlessly kind and seeks to communicate with us and show us how to become the people he created us to be. He is the God of endless possibilities. Destiny is not fate; you can mess it up and cause delay if you don’t pay attention, but neither is destiny a one-shot thing.

Was it God’s will for David to dally around with Bathsheba? Was adultery part of Plan A? No. Was God stymied by a horrible situation? No. In fact after David expressed his deep remorse and repented his and Bathsheba’s son became the next king, and God blessed him. God not only has a plan B but many more letters of the alphabet at his disposal.

Proverbs 3:5-6 says:

Trust God from the bottom of your heart;
don’t try to figure out everything on your own.
Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go;
he’s the one who will keep you on track. (The Message paraphrase)

The more time we spend with God, the easier it is to hear his voice. Sometimes an inconvenient detour is exactly the direction he is leading us in. We may have everything planned out and can see our goal ahead when He says, “Chasm ahead. Now would be a good time to turn left.”

It’s never too late to change direction and follow Jesus Christ. Brilliant opportunities await.

For those willing to surrender their own agendas, it just gets better. It can be a wild ride sometimes, but I know who is crowned the winner at the end of this race. (I read the ending.)

Isaiah 30:20-22:

Cry for help and you’ll find it’s grace and more grace. The moment he hears, he’ll answer. Just as the Master kept you alive during the hard times, he’ll keep your teacher alive and present among you. Your teacher will be right there, local and on the job, urging you on whenever you wander left or right: “This is the right road. Walk down this road.” You’ll scrap your expensive and fashionable god-images. You’ll throw them in the trash as so much garbage, saying, “Good riddance!”