Tag: creation

Perennial

On By Charis PsalloIn Flowers, Photography, spring4 Comments

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I haven’t even tidied this corner of the garden yet. With other projects demanding attention, I’m late with weeding and clean-up. And yet here they are, my faithful, happy harbingers of joy, unpainted fence and plastic detritus notwithstanding.

Leopard’s bane are called perennials because they come back again and again, year after year, without me having to do anything. They are also called “bane” because they were thought to be a threat to threats. Joy as a threat. I like that.

As I downloaded photos today I thought about faithfulness. Faithfulness is one of the attributes of God that he has been emphasizing to me when I ask the question, “Who do you want to show yourself to be for me in these current circumstances?”

It is easier to go through a crisis on your own than to see your children and grandchildren face challenges. We can read about God’s faithfulness, but when we experience God’s ways of bringing us to experiential knowledge of that faithfulness, our relationship with God deepens and becomes our own. My mother’s years of experiencing God’s keeping power through pain meant nothing to me until I heard him sing over me during long dark sleepless nights.

She had her relationship and I have mine. Now I am watching my children and grandchildren discover for themselves that he reveals who he wants to be for them. As I pray for them, I’m learning to stand in the gap without standing in the way.

God is good. Perennially. And not just for me.

Your faithfulness flows from one generation to the next;
all that you created sits firmly in place to testify of you.

Psalm 119:90 TPT

New. It Has Begun.

On By Charis PsalloIn Photography, springLeave a comment

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Made for spirituality, we wallow in introspection.
Made for joy, we settle for pleasure.
Made for justice, we clamor for vengeance.
Made for relationship, we insist on our own way.
Made for beauty, we are satisfied with sentiment.

But new creation has already begun. The sun has begun to rise.
Christians are called to leave behind, in the tomb of Jesus Christ, all that belongs to the brokenness and incompleteness of the present world …

That, quite simply, is what it means to be Christian: to follow Jesus Christ into the new world, God’s new world, which he has thrown open before us.

– N. T. Wright

Reverence

On By Charis PsalloIn Mountains, Photography7 Comments

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Hiking – I don’t like either the word or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains – not hike! Do you know the origin of that word ‘saunter?’ It’s a beautiful word.

Away back in the Middle Ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going, they would reply, “A la sainte terre,’ ‘To the Holy Land.’ And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers.

Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not ‘hike’ through them.”

-John Muir

The mountains are my Holy Land. I go there to pray and rest in the presence of the Lover of my soul. It’s holy because He is holy.

Mist of Night

On By Charis PsalloIn Mountains, Photography, Sky, WaterLeave a comment

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The Lord laid the earth’s foundations with wisdom’s blueprints.
By his living-understanding all the universe came into being.
 
By his divine revelation he broke open
the hidden fountains of the deep,
bringing secret springs to the surface
as the mist of the night dripped down from heaven.

(Proverbs 3:20 TPT)

And This Life Was the Light

On By Charis PsalloIn Flowers, PhotographyLeave a comment

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At the beginning God expressed himself.

That personal expression, that word, was with God, and was God, and he existed with God from the beginning.

All creation took place through him, and none took place without him.

In him appeared life and this life was the light of mankind.

The light still shines in the darkness

and the darkness has never put it out.

(John 1:1-5 Phillips)

 

I’ve heard that glory is however God chooses to express himself.

When the light of Jesus shines in dark places, when forgotten dreams and shattered hopes spring to life, when love flickers in a heart grown cold, when the beauty of creation glows in unexpected places, he is showing us his glory.

Making a Comeback

On By Charis PsalloIn Flowers, Photography, spring, Trees and forests3 Comments

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“If a man just stops to think what he has to praise God for, he will find there is enough to keep him singing praises for a week.”
-Dwight L. Moody

Two years ago the leaves on our double flowering plum suddenly started shriveling up. Within a week most of them had fallen off. Many of the trees on our street suffered the same fate. Leaf miner bugs staged an invasion while we were out on the porch enjoying our ice tea.

We sprayed and fertilized and watered, but it was too late. It was a sad sight. On her way to her car after a visit, my friend Rhonda stopped and held the tip of a barren low-hanging branch in her gentle hand. I knew she was praying for the tree’s recovery. Rhonda is sensitive to nature. She could feel the tree’s pain and she had compassion.

Last spring the tree sprouted leaves, but there were no blossoms. My husband suggested cutting it down, but I couldn’t bear to let go as long as long as it still lived.  I pruned it back and fertilized hoping for revival even as more leaves browned and blew away.

plum tree under vertical ch rs MG_7846This morning as I look out the window above my desk, branches decked in beautiful pink blossoms wave in the breeze. I can’t see them hiding in there, but I can hear the birds singing. Buzzing bees don’t even trigger my fear of them because they are far too busy with flowers to notice me.

The thirty-five-year-old double flowering plum made a dramatic comeback this spring. We marvel in the show because we feared we had lost her.

This week also marks the fourth anniversary of our son-in-love returning home from the hospital. He was miraculously healed after doctors gave him a 0% chance of survival from flesh-eating disease. We thought we had lost him too. But God had other plans, and we still marvel.

To be honest, this has been a year of set-backs. Half of our house is still uninhabited and awaiting restoration after heavy snow-melt floods destroyed the renovation work barely finished. Just when I thought my nagging health issues had finally been dealt with, the tests say ‘not so fast.’ This will require more treatment and more recovery time.

You may be in a season of hope deferred as well.

One thing I have learned in my life: Complaining attracts spiritual forces who are quite willing to help you with dismal projections and align to undermine hope. Praise attracts the angels who live in the atmosphere of worship of the God of Love. They align to bring about God’s purpose – reconciliation between the Father and humankind and restoration of all creation.

Today the plum tree is vibrant with petal colour and birdsong and the hum of honey-makers. Today I have a reminder right outside my window that God is still in the restoration business and there is always, always something to be thankful for.

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In the Theatre of Glory

On By Charis PsalloIn Photography, Sky8 Comments

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I noticed a strange warm light outside my window last evening. I grabbed my camera and went out on the deck at the back of the house to check out the sky. Sometimes, on rainy days in the valley, the clouds on the horizon lift moments before sunset and allow golden light to break through. I’m glad I took the time to look. It only lasted a few minutes but the last bit of sun caught a cloud just before it dropped another shower of  pine and flower-scented rain. God’s grand finale in his theater of glory on a warm Sunday evening.

I went back to my office after it started to fade and saw out the window that yet another rainbow had formed to the south.

 

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I followed it outside. The fine misty rain felt so refreshing I stood on the sidewalk, face to the sky and thanked God for more wonderful visuals of his glory.

 

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The heavens proclaim the glory of God.
The skies display his craftsmanship.
Day after day they continue to speak;
night after night they make him known.
  They speak without a sound or word;
their voice is never heard.
Yet their message has gone throughout the earth,
and their words to all the world.

(Psalm 19)

Jean Calvin called nature a “Theatre of Glory” that continuously speaks of the majesty of the Creator. Alistair E. McGrath wrote: “For Calvin, the creation reflects its Creator at every point. Image after images flashed in front of our eyes, as Calvin attempts to convey the multiplicity of ways in which the creation witnesses to its Creator: it is like a visible garment, which the invisible God dons in order to make himself known; it is like a book in which the name on the Creator is written as its author; it is like a theater, in which the glory of God is publicly displayed; it is like a mirror, in which the works and wisdom of God are reflected.”
A  grand garment, a book, a theatre, a marquee,  a mirror.  Every one saying,  “Beauty! Majesty! Glory!”
Yes. I see you, Lord, and You are Beauty. You are Majesty. You are Glory.
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Each Mountain Shadow, Each Stone on the Beach

On By Charis PsalloIn Art, Mountains, Uncategorized4 Comments
Each Mountain Shadow
Each Mountain Shadow
Each Stone on the Beach
Each Stone on the Beach

 

We are here to witness the creation and abet it. We are here to notice each thing so each thing gets noticed. Together we notice not only each mountain shadow and each stone on the beach but, especially, we notice the beautiful faces and complex natures of each other. We are here to bring to consciousness the beauty and power that are around us and to praise the people who are here with us. We witness our generation and our times. We watch the weather. Otherwise, creation would be playing to an empty house.

-Annie Dillard

Seek, seek, seek the Lord

On By Charis PsalloIn MountainsLeave a comment

Perplexed.

I feel perplexed a lot.

I don’t have the answers to all of life’s problems, or even most of them. Ater I have tried the same old solutions that didn’t work last time (is that not the definition of insanity?) I keep coming back to the same plan of action that does:

Seek the Lord, seek the Lord, seek the Lord.

When will I learn to make this my starting point?

When all kinds of trials and temptations crowd into your lives my brothers, don’t resent them as intruders, but welcome them as friends! Realise that they come to test your faith and to produce in you the quality of endurance. But let the process go on until that endurance is fully developed, and you will find you have become men of mature character with the right sort of independence. And if, in the process, any of you does not know how to meet any particular problem he has only to ask God—who gives generously to all men without making them feel foolish or guilty—and he may be quite sure that the necessary wisdom will be given him. But he must ask in sincere faith without secret doubts as to whether he really wants God’s help or not. The man who trusts God, but with inward reservations, is like a wave of the sea, carried forward by the wind one moment and driven back the next. That sort of man cannot hope to receive anything from God, and the life of a man of divided loyalty will reveal instability at every turn. (James 1:2-8 Phillips translation)

Can you relate?