Tag Archives: Covenant

1357. Late February, and the air’s so balmy snowdrops and crocuses might be fooled into early blooming. ~Gail Mazur

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It’s only approaching mid-February rather than late February hereabouts, and there are no crocuses yet nor snowdrops blooming for us, but it is balmy enough for the quinces, daffodils, and saucer magnolias to have been fooled into blooming.

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oft treacherous is
winter when it proffers not
cold nor snow nor ice

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But instead betrays
the garden with lies that spring
has indeed arrived

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So that daffodils
and quince and magnolias
flower too early

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Leaving them in great
peril from a forth coming
late wintry, hard freeze

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So who’s to say that
‘tis the month of love when
deceitfulness lurks

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But as for the Lord: … but I(God) will not take my love from him, not will I ever betray my faithfulness to him. I will not violate my covenant or alter why my lips have uttered. ~Psalm 89:33-34 ✝

**All photos taken by Natalie except for the first one. I found it on Pinterest today.

 

1197. Let me, O let me bathe my soul in colours; let me swallow the sunset and drink the rainbow. ~Kahlil Gibran

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People observe the colors of a day
only at its beginnings and its ends,
but to me it’s quite clear that a day 
merges
through a multitude 
of shades and intonations,
with each passing moment.
A single hour can consist of 
thousands of different colors.
Waxy yellows, cloud-spat blues. 
Murky darknesses.
~Markus Zusak

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Life is a celebration of passionate colors.

Some days are red. Those are the ones when our spirits are flying high.
Some are green. Those are the ones when we feel most productive and fruitful.
Some days are pink ones. They are full of moments when we feel young at heart. Others are blue. Those are the days we feel down in the dumps.
Then there are the orange ones. Those are peaceful and ones in which we sometimes feel a sense of satisfaction.
At last there are yellow ones. ‘Tis these that are bright and full of cheer.
~Edited passage I found on Pinterest

I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. ~Genesis 9:13  ✝

**Images via Pinterest; collage created by Natalie

1170. Mere color, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways. ~Oscar Wilde

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Let me, O let me bathe my soul in colours;
let me swallow the sunset and drink the rainbow.
~Kahlil Gibran

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A colour, no doubt, is a trifle in itself, and only has its full value when it is in contrast or harmony with other colours…. each colour has an expression and a character peculiar to itself, and each is enlivened as it approaches its lightest shade by its mixture with white, just as it is saddened and perishes as it approaches its darkest shade by its mixture with black. ~Auguste Alexandre Philippe Charles Blanc (1813–1882)

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In a sense, one could speak of the secret life of colour. Despite its outward beckoning, like true beauty, colour is immensely hesitant in giving away its secrets. Painters learn to respect the hesitancy of colour and endeavour to refine their skill to become worthy of its revelations. A painter learns the language of colour slowly. As with any language, you struggle for a long time outside the language. There is a willed deliberateness to how you sequence the strange words to make a sentence.Then one day the language lets you in to where the words dance to your thoughts with ease and fluency. Perhaps for the painter there is a day when colour lets him in, when his palette sings with synergy and delight. ~John O’Donohue

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I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me(God) and the earth. ~Genesis 9:13  ✝

**All images taken by me in my yardt; all collages created by me

562. Wild is the music of autumnal winds amongst the faded woods. ~William Wordsworth

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Every leaf speaks bliss to me
fluttering from the autumn tree.
~Emily Brontë

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Brisk breezes are moving across the landscape today, and as a result it’s raining confetti-colored leaves. So it is that bone by bone by bone the garden’s structure is reappearing whilst that which was fleshed out in spring and summer withers or falls away. These, the yard’s skeletons, will remain, holding tightly to their promised renewal throughout months steeped in wintry chills. Even though bare and stripped of visible signs of life, they will yet proffer a comforting presence and a kind of beauty to those who watch and wait during cloudy coldness and rarer bouts of the sun’s warmth and mercy. And though they become pale and wan and washed in grays and beige, in the spreading silences, the wind whispers that they and life–that spark, that miracle, that breath–have not been vanquished; all is not lost as down, down, down into coming winter’s “vale of grief” we go.

Sovereign Lord, you are God! Your covenant is trustworthy, and you have promised these good things to your servant. ~2 Samuel 19:23   ✝

**Image via Pinterest

280. Spring, you put a spell on me and you make me feel like dancing… ~Edited and adapted excerpt of lyrics by Vincent, Poncia Jr./Leo Sayer

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Happy days are here again!
The skies above are clear again!
So let’s sing a song of cheer again!
Happy days are here again!
~Excerpted lyrics by Milton Ager/Jack Yellen

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Okay, so it’s not really spring yet, at least not according the the calendar, but springy things sprang up in my greenhouse yesterday.  As a result melodies, not just from the birds, filled the air, and indeed it was an occasion for dancing.  I didn’t care what the neighbors might think about an old lady jumpin’ around like a madwoman, it was definitely time for some singin’ and a little jig.  Why?  Well after weeks of waiting tulips were blooming, a daffodil had opened up, and the first bee of the season had found its way inside to sup on the nectar in my little grape hyacinths.  I don’t know about you, but that’s a formula for springtime in my book.  And every time beauty and miracles like that emerge from seemingly nothingness, I fall in love all over again with the Creator of the Universe.  What amazing things He has made and given to us, we creatures who are often so undeserving of His gifts and His grace!  Now that’s love, is it not?!

He said, “O Lord, God of Israel, there is no God like you, in heaven or on earth, keeping covenant in steadfast love with your servants who walk before you with all their heart.  ~2 Chronicles 6:14  ✝

224. There is a bird that God has blessed, she wears this honor on her chest… ~Rick Fernandez, Sr.

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When father takes his spade to dig
then the Robin comes along;
And sits upon a little twig
And sings a little song.

Or, if the trees are rather far
He does not stay alone,
But comes up close to where we are
And bobs upon a stone.
~“The Robin” by Laurence Alma-Tadema

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Since the mid 19th century in the UK and in Ireland, the robin has been strongly associated with Christmas; its image has been used on Christmas cards and on postage stamps.  Legend has it, according to an old British folk tale, that when Jesus was dying on the cross, the Robin, then a simply brown bird, flew to his side and sang into his ear in order to comfort him in his pain. The blood from his wounds stained the Robin’s breast, and thereafter all Robins have borne the mark of Christ’s blood upon them.  More than likely however, the association with the robin and Christmas may have come from the fact that postmen in Victorian Britain wore red jackets and were nicknamed “Robins.”

Now may the God of peace, who brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, make you complete in everything good so that you may do his will, working among us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever.  Amen.  ~Hebrews 13:19-21  ✝