Tag Archives: Jesus

453. I like the serendipitous surprises of reality. ~Lawrence Wright

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I believe in the surprises of the Holy Spirit.
~L. J. Suenens

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A surprise! An unexpected or astonishing event, fact, or thing; something that causes one to feel wonder, astonishment, or amazement. And what happened at my house yesterday fits the description of all those things! It had been and still was a bright, sunny August Sabbath with a temperature that had soared up to 105, and then out of the blue, literally, in mid-afternoon it began to pour down rain. The sun was still shining brightly as the rain fell, and right here in my backyard a rainbow appeared. Sadly my camera was in the other room, and I couldn’t get it fast enough to take a picture of our personal little rainbow, but I did get a picture through the screen of my big patio doors of the rainy and sunny scene outside. Another interesting phenomena was that there were only two fairly good gusts of wind as it rained, but one of them was powerful enough to lift my neighbor’s backyard patio umbrella up off her deck and cast it over her house into the front yard. The rain only lasted about 3 or 4 minutes, but it was like manna falling from heaven for one as starved for the sight of rain as I. It may not have rained a lot or even enough to green up our parched land, but it was more than enough to bless our eyes, restore our hope that rain will come again, and make us smile about the rainbow and freakish umbrella incident.

**Don’t be misled by how green my yard looks; I spend a lot of money watering my “babies.” But the land around us is very parched and brown as it always is during August.

By the God of your father who will help you, and by the Almighty who will bless you with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that lies beneath, blessings of the breasts and of the womb. ~Genesis 49:25    ✝

Thank you, 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 holy name for that all you have given.

452. She told me about rolling hills covered with cornfields and treeless miles of land without water. ~A. LaFaye

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I have no hostility to nature,
but a child’s love to it.
I expand and live in
the warm day like corn and melons.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

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August is upon us now with its usual dry nastiness and so the “parcels of corn” have indeed become “brown and sere.” Though their yield was harvested some time ago and the plants left to die under the blistering summer sun, I think their golden-brown, curled flag-leaves create a kind of unique beauty. And now that the farmers have begun the process of removing the dry, dead remains, even the barren, stub-filled fields have an intriguing eye-appeal. Although both my parents were raised on farms in farming communities, I had my very first experience with growing a crop like corn a few summers ago when our daughter and her husband decided to sow some corn in their inner city garden. Once the seedlings got going, it seemed like almost every day for a while that the stalks grew taller and taller. Then as the tassels appeared, the stalks began to buzz with the constant hum of more honey bees than I’ve ever seen in a suburban garden. Later on when the pale yellow silks started emerging, our excitement heightened again as the bees buzzed on harvesting the huge amounts of yellowish pollen falling from the floppy tassels. At that point I became so fascinated by the goings on that I went to the internet and was truly dumfounded to read that each piece of pollen that lands on a silk produces only one of the two to four hundred kernels that typically appear on a single ear of corn. How amazing is that! When it was all said and done, not only was their small crop of corn the tastiest any of us had ever eaten, but it also aroused in us and our offspring a sense of respect for the generations of farmers within our family lineage as well as for the ancient civilizations whose cultures had had a marked and ongoing influence on the global landscape. But more than anything, we marveled, as we always do, at the wonders of Creation and its Maker.

May the people praise you, O God; may all the people praise you. Then the land will yield its harvest, and God, our God will bless us. ~Psalm 67:5-7   ✝

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! Like Saint Hildegard Lord, may I too be a feather on your holy breath and spread, like seeds, the gospel abroad.

451. Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven, blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels. ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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Here come real stars to fill the upper skies,
And here on earth come emulating flies,
That though they never equal stars in size,
(And they were never really stars at heart)
Achieve at times a very star-like start.
~Robert Frost

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But wait, there’s yet another that “achieves at ties a very star-like start,” and it began blooming here this week. Though called Sweet Autumn Clematis, this handsome climbing vine displays its billowy masses of fragrant white flowers here in August. And when it does, the twining vine is one alluring diva that makes a very impressive statement. For when it blooms in the garden, it is blessed with an incredible number of small, star-shaped blossoms which form a white fleece-like blanket that drapes beautifully over large rocks, chain-link fences, arbors, pergolas, or even a dangling birdhouse. So as the “lovely stars” blossom in the “infinite meadows of heaven” in August over Texas, they bloom also day and night on her tamed prairies.

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Praise Him, sun and moon; Praise Him, all you stars of light. ~Psalm 148:3   ✝

Sweet Jesus, fill us with the mercy you bled on the cross and draw us back unto Yourself! Thank You for the gladness You put in our hearts. Help us to be aware of You in all that we see and hear in Creation’s realm.

450. A flash of harmless lightning, a mist of rainbow dyes, the burnished sunbeams brightening from flower to flower he flies. ~John B. Tabb

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a day of dreams
the garden and the hummingbird
float on my breath
~Haiku by Larry Gates

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Gift

A day so happy.
Fog lifted early. I worked in the garden.
Hummingbirds were stopping over the honeysuckle flowers.
There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess.
I knew no one worth my envying him.
Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.
To think that once I was the same man did not embarrass me.
In my body I felt no pain.
When straightening up, I saw blue sea and sails.

~By Czeslaw Milosz

You (Lord) have put gladness in my heart… ~Psalm 4:7a   ✝

Sweet Jesus, fill us with the mercy you bled on the cross and draw us back unto Yourself! Thank You for the gladness You put in our hearts. Help us to be aware of You in all that we see and hear in Creation’s realm.

** Image via Pinterest

449. With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things. ~William Wordsworth

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Bright flowers, whose home is everywhere
Bold in maternal nature’s care
And all the long year through the heir
Of joy and sorrow,
Methinks that there abides in thee
Some concord with humanity,
Given to no other flower I see
The forest through.
~From his poem “To the Daisy”
by William Wordsworth

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Daisies, these in the photos are not, but members of the same family they are. And I believe the sunflower and the two Echinacea blossoms on either side are as deserving of Wordsworth’s poetic description as the daisy since all are equally bold, bright, and beautiful. The best part is that none of them need much tending and can be grown with very little effort in a wide variety of soils. And methinks too that there abides in all three “some concord(harmony) with humanity” because they bring the “deep power of joy” to the eye and not only reflect God’s glory but also fulfill a portion of His promises. Another great feature of the beauties is that these members of a 40 million-year-old family readily reseed themselves. That means that a gardener or farmer can start with a single plant and at the end of a growing season harvest more than enough seeds to share with other growers or to start a plethora of new plants in his/her own garden. The English writer, John Mason Good, said it best of such flowers, “Not worlds on worlds, in phalanx deep, need we to prove a God is here. The daisy, fresh from nature’s sleep, tells of His hand in lines as clear.”

Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself, on the earth”; and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seed according to its kind, and the tree that yields fruit, whose seed is in itself according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. ~Genesis 1:11-12    ✝

Sweet Jesus, fill us with the mercy you bled on the cross and draw us back unto Yourself! Help us to be aware of You in all that we see and hear in Creation!

447. The love of gardening is a seed once sown that never dies. ~Gertrude Jekyll

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We cannot conceive of matter being
formed from nothing,
since things require a seed to start from…
Therefore there is not anything
which returns to nothing,
but all things return dissolved
into their elements.
~William Shakespeare

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Photo taken by Mike Bizeau at: http://naturehasnoboss.wordpress.com/2014/08/04/sunday-brunch/

May God bless the soil and may it forever be wholesome and fruitful…
May there always be sufficient water, warmth, and light for earth’s crops…
May God bless all seed-bearing plants for their bounty of food and flower…
May seeds never fail to burst into the fullness of their kind…
May God bless the farmer’s labors and the gardener’s work…
May all the world’s crops be plentiful and good…
May God bless us all, great and small…
May earth’s peoples be good stewards of God’s Creation…
And may summer perpetually reveal God’s wondrous ways…

“While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, and day and night shall not cease.” ~Genesis 8:22   ✝

Sweet Jesus, fill us with the mercy you bled and draw us back unto Yourself!

446. Petunia, you are a jewel of the dawn; your horn is thick and bright as the morning. ~Steve Gunther

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Petunia, you raise your face
and trumpet your song to the midday.
Your song is delicate and frail.
Your green fingers tremble in the smile of the eye
like the hum of a bee lost in the torpor of your kiss.

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Your head nods with the gentle breeze.
You are at peace.
Your color is your happiness.
Petunia, open your eye,
spread your fragile smile to the moon.

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Your petals drink in the night,
the cool air sits on you
weightless, trickling
from your fluted flowers,
from your fingers.

~Excerpted and adapted verses from a poem by Steve Gunther

My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast; I will sing and give praise. Awake, my glory! Awake, lute and harp! I will awaken the dawn. ~Psalm 57:7-8   ✝

Sweet Jesus, fill us with the mercy You bled and draw us back unto Yourself!

 

445. For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly. most perfectly alive. ~D. H. Lawrence

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There is the power of gathering:
it inspires us, delightfully,
to be more hopeful,
more joyful,
more thoughtful:
in a word, more alive.
~Alice Waters

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I feel alive
I come alive
I am alive
on God’s great dance floor.
~Excerpted lyrics from a song
written by Martin Smith, Nick Herbert, Chris Tomlin

For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. ~Romans 8:38-39    ✝

Sweet Jesus, fill us with the mercy you bled and draw us back unto Yourself!

444. We dance round in a ring and suppose, but the Secret sits in the middle and knows. ~Robert Frost

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Into my life, larger than life, beautiful, you strolled in.
I hid in my ordinary days, in the long grass of routine,
in my camouflage rooms.
~Carol Anne Duffy

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You are my hiding place. You always fill my heart with songs of deliverance. Whenever I am afraid, I will trust in you. ~Excerpted lyrics by Michael James Ledner

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O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the stairs, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely. ~Song of Songs 2.14   ✝

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You are my hiding place; you will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance. ~Psalm 32:7   ✝

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! Like Saint Hildegard may I too be a feather on your holy breath and spread, like seeds, the gospel abroad.

443. August bursts on the scene like a matchflame in the heat and haze of crimson sunsets. ~Edited excerpt from a poem by Elizabeth Maua Taylor

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When the blackberries hang
swollen in the woods, in the brambles
nobody owns, I spend



all day among the high
branches, reaching
my ripped arms, thinking



of nothing, cramming
the black honey of summer
into my mouth; all day my body

accepts what it is. In the dark
creeks that run by there is
this thick paw of my life darting among

the black bells, the leaves; there is
this happy tongue.
~Mary Oliver

Then the land will yield its fruit, and you will eat your fill and live there in safety. ~Leviticus 25:10  ✝

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! Like Saint Hildegard Lord, may I too be a feather on your holy breath and spread, like seeds, the gospel abroad.

** Photo via Pinterest