Tag Archives: Grace

341. So pure, so still the starry heaven, so hushed the brooding air, I could hear the sweep of an angel’s wings… ~Edna Dean Proctor

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Our Lord has written
the promise of resurrection,
not in books alone,
but in every leaf in springtime.
~Martin Luther

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Creation is a perpetual outpouring of God’s creative and loving selfhood. The sacred isn’t merely above us but forever within the entire body of Creation. The holy sound of God resonates in everything. The earth gives us reason to feel His gracious hand upon us while the forces of heaven sustain us. These realities are meant to stir in humanity a sense of belonging and in turn spark a desire to seek the Lord, but should they not, finding God in Christ is something even the blind can do. Our Creator sent us His son over 2,000 years ago, and He came to be our memory and to remind us of who we are and to whom we belong. Jesus is a revelation of our loving Father and His Kingdom’s intention. Christ offers salvation to the children of the Light who are subjected to temptation by malevolent forces, and He is a leader who directs God’s children into righteous rhythms of life, into a willingness to serve others, and into the dance of life–a dance in which the whole universe partners.

I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know Him better.  ~Ephesians 1:17  ✝

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!

340. I sit in my garden, gazing upon beauty that cannot gaze upon itself, and I find sufficient purpose for my day. ~Robert Brault

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The garden reconciles human art and wild nature,
hard work and deep pleasure,
spiritual practice and the material world.
It’s a magical place because it’s not divided.
The many divisions and polarizations
that terrorize a disenchanted world
find peaceful accord
among mossy rock walls,
rough stony paths,
and trimmed bushes.
Maybe a garden sometimes seems fragile
because it achieves an extraordinary
delicate balance of nature and human life, naturalness and artificiality.
It has its own liminality,
its points of balance between great extremes.
~Thomas Moore

My beloved has gone down to the garden, to the beds of spices, to browse in the gardens and to gather the lilies. I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine; he browses among the lilies. ~Song of Songs 6:2-3 ✝

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!

339. …Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? ~Mary Oliver

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Blessed be the longing that brought you here
and that quickens your soul with wonder.
May you have joy and peace in the temple of your senses each day.
May your days bring you quiet miracles that seek no attention.
If difficulties arise, and they will, may you be consoled
in the secret sympathy of your soul.
May you experience all your days as a sacred gift
woven around the heart of God.
May you live always in the neighborhood of love
and in awe of the mystery of being here.
May the frames of your belonging
be large enough for the dreams of your soul.
May you arise each day with a voice of blessing
whispering in your heart that something good is going to happen.
May you know today and always that you are ever embraced
in the kind circle of God.
~Text is a borrowed, altered, and/or embellished anthology
from a collection of Celtic blessings.

You will eat the fruit of your labor; blessings and prosperity will be yours. Psalm 12:2  ✝

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!

338. Memory is the diary we all carry about with us. ~Oscar Wilde

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Memory is a way of holding onto
the things you love,
the things you are,
the things you never want to lose.
~From the television show The Wonder Years

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More than half a century ago my father died on this date, and yet I listen still for his voice, a voice held dear and silenced forever when his mortal heart ceased to beat. In memory his deeds and words echo on in my heart, and neither the tears of sadness I’ve cried nor the moments of bitter resentment about his early death I’ve endured have muted the sounds of that beloved voice. Regrettably this was a door, and it has not been a singular one, that closed long long before it should have, and none of the ranting or raving or railing against any of it has altered the impact of the losses. The simple truth is that time marches unstoppably on as season after season passes over the fields of our lives; people continually move in and out, and there is a never ending series of opening and closing doors along the way. In the aftermath of unavoidable, grievous experiences our faith is tested, tried, and sometimes even forsaken, but the Holy One who walks with us is never absent nor is the offer of His gift of grace ever retracted.

How very precious every breath and every moment of life is! Declarations of love to family and friends and the Lord should be vocalized over and over again, and we need to hear the same from the ones we cherish. If such things are left unsaid what goes unspoken leaves gaping holes and wounds in the human heart, and the subsequent path to healing is enough of a long and arduous road as it is.

In you, Lord, I have taken refuge; let me never be put to shame; deliver me in your righteousness. Turn your ear to me, come quickly to my rescue; be my rock of refuge, a strong fortress to save me. Since you are my rock and my fortress, for the sake of your name lead and guide me. Psalm 31:1-3  ✝

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!

**Images via Pinterest

337. We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it. ~George Eliot

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I’d give all the wealth that years have piled,
The slow result of Life’s decay,
To be once more a little child
For one bright summer day.
~Lewis Carroll

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The sidewalks were long and narrow that ran between the stucco houses, and high was the exterior wall of the two-story duplex two doors down from us on the seaward end of the block. At the base of that duplex’s stucco wall was an elongated flower bed filled with pansies and strawberries, and about halfway down the wall was a door that separated the flower bed into two sections. Behind the door was a storage area, a closet of sorts, filled with all kinds of fascinating objects. Because the closet was under the front stairwell of the two story structure, it was one of those odd-shaped little niches with a downward sloping ceiling on one end. In the closet’s mysterious, deeper recesses were all kinds of tools. When the door to the closet was ajar, it meant Uncle was inside sitting on his stool and working on a yard or household task Auntie had commissioned. The “doghouse” as he called it, was a rich and irresistible den of curiosities for a young child, and in it with Uncle as tutor-in-residence I not only learned but also fell in love with a myriad of things. The closet with its earthy smells and assorted contraptions was a magical place, and the gardening tools were as provocative a sight for young eyes as the images of the storybook gardens they conjured up. Decades later when a friend commented that I live close to nature, I thought of that closet again and realized the lasting impression that it and Uncle had made on my life. Then and there in a place that smelled of soil and sea I came to love and respect the earth for its charming and sometimes “shy presences”–the visible ones, the audible ones, the tangible ones, even the ones that dwelt in dim obscurity. Uncle’s closet and his tales gave birth to “stirrings” that ultimately led me to believe that all Creation is a gift to be cherished and that its Maker is to be adored and praised.

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The LORD is my strength and my song; He has become my salvation. He is my God, and I will praise Him, my father’s God, and I will exalt Him. ~Exodus 15:2  ✝

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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!

**Images via Pinterest

336. While the fates permit, live happily; life speeds on with hurried step, and with winged days the wheel of the headlong year is turned. ~Seneca

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In depth a light will grow,
A silver shine no shadows know,
Like wings unfolding in the sky,
That circle ‘round a gleaming eye,
Turning darkness all away,
Even depths will know their day,
For every shadow has its end,
In light! Life will return again!
~Robert Fanney

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For myself, I am grateful to nature not so much when I see her on the side that is open to the world, as when I am permitted to enter her shrine. Then one may seek to know of what stuff the universe is made, who is its author or guardian, what is the nature of God… Life would have been a useless gift were I not admitted to the study of such themes. ~Seneca, 4 BC – AD 65

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Grace is what picks me up
and lifts my wings high above and I fly!
Grace always conquers!
Be graceful in everything;
in anger, in sadness, in joy in kindness, in unkindness,
retain grace with you!
~C. JoyBell C.

Keep me as the apple of Your eye; hide me in the shadow of Your wings… Psalm 17:8 ✝

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!

**Both images via Pinterest

335. Here are the sweet peas, on tip-toe for a flight: with wings of gentle flush o’er delicate white, and taper fingers catching at all things, to bind them all about. ~John Keats

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By helpful fingers taught to twine
Around its trellis, grew
A delicate and dainty vine;
The bursting bud, its blossom sign,
Inlaid with honeyed-dew.
~Hattie Howard

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Between each row of houses in Belmont Shore, California, where I grew up ran an alley which was the way to get in and out of the rear facing garages; it was also a favorite place to ride my bike or skates as well as being a frequented path to the homes of neighboring friends. Besides the garages the alley skirted the back yards of the houses and on many of the fences grew Sweet Pea vines. Not only were the flowers of these vines lovely and fragrant, but for a curious and imaginative child born in and of and wedded to one of the few remaining years of innocence the world would ever know they were the home of enchanted and magical fairy creatures.

Hauntingly unforgettable indeed have been the gardens in my childhood, but it was more than just the colors, the beautiful flowers and the lovely fragrances. Along with being mesmerized by all that splendor, I was courted by the Holy One, Yahweh, whose sole intent was to capture my heart and reveal His own. Though the world and its deceptions fought long and hard to turn me away from Jesus, He would not and did not give up on what had always been His.

The world is very old;
But every Spring
It groweth young again,
And fairies sing.
~Author Unknown

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With their richly colored, yet small, delicate flowers, the sweet pea’s history can be traced back to 17th century Italy when a Sicilian monk, Franciscus Cupani, sent its seeds to England. Then Henry Eckford, a Scottish nurseryman, cross-bred the original flower and created the colorful and intensely sweet scented blossom that became the floral sensation of the late Victorian era.

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The Song of the “Sweet Pea Fairies”

Here Sweet Peas are climbing,
(Here’s the Sweet Pea rhyme!)
Here are little tendrils,
Helping them to climb.

Here are sweetest colours,
Fragrance very sweet;
Here are silky pods of peas,
None for us to eat!

Here’s a fairy sister,
Trying on with care.
Such a grand new bonnet
For the baby there.

Does it suit you Baby?
Yes, I really think
Nothing’s more becoming
Than this pretty pink!

~Cicely Mary Barker

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My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. Psalm 139:15-16 ✝

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!

**My sweet pea vines are climbing but not blooming yet so I’m using images here that I found on Pinterest.

332. For to have complete satisfaction from flowers, you must have time to spend with them. ~Princess Grace of Monaco

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As I work among my flowers, I find myself talking to them…

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Reasoning and remonstrating with them…

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And adoring them as if they were human beings…

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Much laughter I provoke among my friends by so doing…

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But that is of no consequence…

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We are on such good terms, my flowers and I!

The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of the birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land… ~Song of Solomon 2:12 ✝

Thank you, 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!

331. The sound of birds stops the noise in my mind. ~Carly Simon

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Those little nimble musicians of the air,
that warble forth their curious ditties,
with which nature hath furnished them
to the shame of art.
~Izaak Walton

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Is this little guy cute or what! I first saw it yesterday while I was out taking pictures. What made me aware of its presence was the unusual twittering noise I heard above me. Wanting to know what creature’s “curious ditties” had broken into my solitude, I turned around and listened for it to come again. When it did, I spied the little thing sitting up high in the branches of the still barren, woody althea shrub. At first glance and seeing only its back side I thought the bird was a small female cardinal but the longer I stood there peering up at it, the less convinced of that idea I was. Finally it dawned on me what it was even though until then I’d only seen photographs of titmice in books. Of course my first instinct was to raise the camera and snap away, but since I didn’t know how skittish this bird might be, I decided to stand very still for a few more minutes. When I did start shooting, the titmouse continued on about its business seemingly quite unconcerned about my presence, so much so that instead of flying away it proceeded to move, hop by hop, closer to the adjacent peanut feeder. As it turned out the tufted darling, at least this one, was quite the “ham” because it would stop from time to time and look right at me as if posing for the camera. Once its hunger was satiated, the titmouse flew away, but I somehow knew this one would come again. And sure enough it returned today. Its curious little twittering noise alerted me of the bird’s presence, and I, delighted to see it, only watched from afar this time. Life here on planet earth is undeniably fraught with hardships and brutality, but every now and again it gives the appearance of being the untroubled paradise it once was. Where? Mercifully in the little piece of Eden that a garden is the difficulties and noise of a fallen world are sometimes silenced long enough for paradise to reveal itself once again if only for a short while.

My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods; with singing lips my mouth will praise you. ~Psalm 63:5 ✝

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!

**Some of these images were found on Pinterest.

330. The birds pour forth their souls in notes, of rapture from a thousand throats. ~William Wordsworth

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Happier of happy though I be, like them
I cannot take possession of the sky,
Mount with a thoughtless impulse and wheel there
One of a mighty multitude, whose way
And motion is a harmony and dance
Magnificent…
~William Wordsworth

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A few weeks ago much of the ground in my garden was bare and seemingly bereft of life; now growing things are exploding from every plot, nook, and cranny. Even things I didn’t sow or plant are coming forth thanks to the winter winds and birds who sowed seeds for me. The bird population, as it does every spring, has swelled as well; the air is filled with the fluttering of wings, the building of nests, and joyful birdsongs. And what sweet melodies the birds sing for mankind! It does indeed seem that they “pour forth their souls in notes, of rapture from a thousand throats.” And as I listen, I find myself wondering how many birds have sung these same songs since the beginning of time. The number would probably stagger my imagination, but whatever it is would be more than enough to remind me that each of us is here with as much of a Divine purpose as they. Why, might one ask does their singing bring that thought to mind? It’s something that occurred to me long ago when I read, “A bird doesn’t sing because it has a reason. It sings because it has a song.” So now that thought always reminds me that every one of us has a voice, a “song” of some kind that’s capable, like the birds, of bringing a joyful noise into the world both for the Lord and for those mortals in need of hearing one.

Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all the earth: make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise. ~Psalm 98:4 ✝

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!

**Image via Pinterest