When you arise in the morning,
think of what a privilege it is to be alive –
to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.
~Marcus Aurelius
Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty heavens. Praise him for his acts of power; praise him for his surpassing greatness…Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. ~Psalm 150:1-2, 6 ✝
**Pink morning glories in the day’s first light in my garden.
There is no glory or blossom
till looked upon by loving eye;
There is no fragrance in April breezes
till breathed with joy as they wander by.
~William C. Bryant
Hark, I hear a robin calling!
List, the wind is from the south!
And the orchard-bloom is falling
Sweet as kisses on the mouth.
In the dreamy vale of beeches
Fair and faint is woven mist,
And the river’s orient reaches
Are the palest amethyst.
Every limpid brook is singing
Of the lure of April days;
Every piney glen is ringing
With the maddest roundelays.
Come and let us seek together
Springtime lore of daffodils,
Giving to the golden weather
Greeting on the sun-warm hills.
~Lucy Maud Montgomery
Ask the Lord for rain in the springtime; it is the Lord who sends the thunderstorms. He gives showers of rain to all people, and plants of the field to everyone. ~Zechariah 10:1 ✝
**Image found on Pinterest
Truly, I am as a grain of sand in the desert,
Infinitesimal, so very small!
And, yet, I serve a purpose in this wondrous world,
As do the trees, so stately and so tall.
I’m just a tiny atom that God has placed down here—
I do not even know the reason why!
But I’m sure that He, with wisdom, has evolved a plan
To fit me in His pattern ere I die.
~Gertrude Tooley Buckingham
According to Scripture, each one of us is made in God’s image, and though we are, as Buckingham declares, merely an infinitesimal “grain of sand in the desert,” we do indeed, as she also purports, serve a purpose “in this wondrous world.” We are also told in Holy Writ, that the Lord with His limitless power is ready, willing, and able to helps us discern what our purpose is. So the question is how does He do that? Well, we are given a brain that has the ability to learn, a heart that is able to love, ears that hear, and eyes that are capable of discerning a wide spectrum of things. Okay, then, how does He, from afar, orchestrate the discharge of His plan. Well, since our mouths can deliver His loving smile, our voices speak comforting words, our hands administer compassionate healing, our legs carry whatever is lacking to places totally bereft of the “wondrous” aspect of life, it would appear our lives are to be spent serving Him with the gifts we’ve been given. The better question is: how can we who bear Yahweh’s image and breathe His holy breath, do anything but make it our primary concern to spend time with Him and ask for revelation about what it is He would have us do with our “one wild and precious life.” Otherwise, what would be the point of being able to give and receive love if there were no place to spend it nor people with whom to share it?
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to his purpose. ~Romans 8:28 ✝
** Image via Pinterest
Who will tell whether one happy moment
of love or the joy of breathing or walking
on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air,
is not worth all the suffering and effort
which life implies.
~Erich Seligmann Fromm
Let us bless the air
Benefactor of breath,
Keeper of the fragile bridge
We breathe across.
Air waiting outside
The womb, to funnel
A first breath
That lets us begin
To be here,
Each moment
Drawn from
Its invisible stock.
~Excerpt from In Praise of Air
by John O’Donohue
In His hands is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind. ~Job 12:10 ✝
**Image via Pinterest
Music, oh, how faint, how weak,
Language fades before thy spell!
Why should Feeling ever speak,
When thou canst breathe her soul so well?
~Thomas Moore, Irish Poet
Music gives a
soul to the universe,
wings to the mind,
flight to the imagination,
and life to everything.
~Plato, Greek philosopher and mathematician
The Bird her punctual music brings
And lays it in its place –
Its place is in the Human Heart
And in the Heavenly Grace –
~Emily Dickinson, American poet
Music speaks what cannot be expressed,
soothes the mind and gives it rest,
heals the heart and makes it whole,
flows from heaven to the soul.
~Author Unknown
First was the world as one great cymbal made,
Where jarring winds to infant Nature played.
All music was a solitary sound,
To hollow rocks and murm’ring fountains bound.
~Andrew Marvell, English poet
It is good to praise the Lord and make music to your name, O Most High. ~Psalm 92: 1 ✝
**Images via Pinterest
Seasons knocking on the door
Each one with its unique lore
Springtime fingerpaints the earth
Spreading its immeasurable mirth
Summer’s heat bursts upon the scene
And each day the sun reigns as queen
Autumn casts a cloak of burnished hues
With copper tinged foliage as its muse
Winter’s kingdom wears robes of pristine white
While snowflakes whispered dance is quite the sight
Seasons stand side by side, natural neighbors
Observing each other’s seasonal labors.
~Edited poem by Kristen A.
He (G0d) made the moon to mark the seasons, and the sun knows when to go down. ~Psalm 104:19 ✝
Nature is man’s teacher.
She unfolds her treasures to his search
unseals his eye, illumes his mind, purifies his heart;
an influence breathes from all the sights
and sounds of existence.
~Alfred Billings Street
It is not so much being “city pent” that keeps me from looking long into the “fair and open face” of the heavens in summer. It’s from being “house pent.” However, to keep my heat-driven incarceration inside my air-conditioned home from totally stifling my spiritual breathing, I hungrily emerge out of doors for a while very early and/or very late in the day. Outside and under the heavens I am able at last to breathe long and deep in prayer. According to Howard Pyle, “The stories of childhood leave an indelible impression, and their author always has a niche in the temple of memory from which the image is never cast out to be thrown on the rubbish heap of things that are outgrown and outlived.” In my childhood nature and her sweet stories left a profound impression in my memory. Because as Pyle suggests that impression was not thrown on “the rubbish heap” and because late in life I reentered nature’s haunts by means of a garden, I was brought back to a reverent and devoted relationship with the Maker of my soul and Creation.
Last night when I was out, I noticed that a pure white Angel’s Trumpet had opened, and it was still there briefly this morning. The brilliance of its whiteness reminded me of the temporal dominion of any kind of darkness and the inevitable return of light. Then when I came inside, I read an email from a friend in which he quoted “Peace is seeing the sunrise and sunset and knowing who to thank.” Though neither he nor I knew whom to credit for the thought, we always know who to thank for everything. So thank you, Lord, for sunrises and sunsets as well as endings and beginnings. For you see the Angel in the Trumpet intimated that the heat beast is on its last legs.
The earth is filled with Your love, Lord; teach me Your decrees. ~Psalm 119:64 ✝
Lord God, Your breath is within me, and I will honor and praise you with every breath that I breathe.
I am all around you,
hovering over you
even as you see My Face.
I am nearer
than you dare believe,
closer than the air you breathe.
If My children could only
recognize My Presence,
they would never
feel lonely again.
~Sarah Young writing from
the perspective that
Jesus is speaking to you
But now in Christ Jesus you who were once far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. ~Ephesians 2:13 ✝
Be still, and know that I am God. ~Psalm 46:10 ✝
Thank you, Lord Jesus, that you save, you heal, you restore, and you reveal Your Father’s heart to us! May I dwell in Your holy presence and praise Your name for all that you have given and done. Please let me stay and rest in Your holiness.
In the garden I tend to drop my thoughts here and there.
To the flowers I whisper the secrets I keep and the hopes I breathe.
I know they are there to eavesdrop for the angels.
~Dodinsky
A fellow blogger recently wrote about the garden of her childhood and at the end her post she asked her readers if they, too, remembered a garden from their childhood. And though I do, mine wasn’t just a single garden, it was garden after garden after garden because I grew up in Southern California which is a garden in and of itself. Simply put I remember flowers at every turn, colors at every turn, and fragrances everywhere; so amazing were they that more than half a century later, they are as vivid and fragrant as ever. Also my grandmother and my mother’s sister who lived in Texas where we visited almost every summer loved flowers and had lovely gardens of their own. So for me the answer to Annette’s question is a resounding yes, yes, yes.
Today while I was at the nursery buying fertilizer for the lawn, the first plant I saw (the bougainvillea below) was one that grows all over Southern California and sometimes so wild and unrestrained that it covers rooftops. So I decided to make photos from the nursery along with some of my favorite garden quotes as an answer to her question and an offering to you.
The garden is a long son, a duet between a human being and Mother Nature.
~Jeff Cox
To this day, I cannot see a bright daffodil,
a proud gladiola, or a smooth egglant
without thinking of Papa.
Like his plants and trees,
I grew up as a part of his garden.
~Leo Buscaglia
As a gardener, I’m among those who believe
that much of the evidence of God’s existence has been planted.
~Robert Brault
A garden really lives only insofar as it is an
expression of faith, the embodiment of hope, and a song of praise.
~Russell Page
Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. Proverbs 22:6 ✝
Thank you, Lord Jesus, that you save, you heal, you restore, and you reveal Your Father’s heart to us! You have captured me with grace and I’m caught in Your infinite embrace!
Let me arise and open the gate,
to breathe the wild warm air…
To let Life in, and to let out Death.
~Violet Fane
Blow, Breath of heaven, blow! Blow through the land and over the waters. Carry away death’s dark vapors and let life in. Let every mountain, plain, and valley break forth in gladness. Let the “wild warm air” of coming spring spark life in every nook and cranny. Let the ceaseless waves of the seas and the rushing currents of rivers roar with renewed passion for life. Let the clouds suckle earth’s waters and send rain from heaven to moisten the earth and let loose her flowering. Let life, whole and vibrant, dazzle us anew. Blow, sweet Breath of heaven, blow! Blow through Your children and take us down to the bottom of our souls where You, O God, the Breath of all things, are present “deep within all that has life.” We who have traversed icy winter’s dark domain yearn to feel your warmth and vitality course in us and all of life again. We long for earth and sky’s vast array of bright colors to take away winter’s preponderance of grays and browns. O Holy One, come; let us see You “in every emanation of Creation’s life.” We give you glory and thanks for all that You are, for Your ever-lasting goodness and never-ending love, “for creatures stirring forth,” “for plant forms stretching and unfolding,” “for the stable earth and its solid rocks.” O blessed Breath of heaven, arise and blow life afresh through Eden’s gates! (Quoted phrases from SOUNDS OF THE ETERNAL by J. Philip Newell)
By the word of the LORD were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of His mouth. ~Psalm 33:6 ✝
**photos via Pinterest
Sacred Touches 