291. The more I see you, the more I find you, the more I find you, the more I love you. ~Kari Jobe

February 26, 2014 by nataliescarberry

Come, gentle Spring!
Ethereal mildness!
Come.
~James Thomson

Spring is coming! Its earliest harbingers have arrived to tell me so. And with it, as always, comes a heightened sense of awe and wonder, a sense of such that I acquired at a very early age. Thus I look not outside Creation nor separate from it, to find God. The words of Romans 1:20 in Scripture intimates that “the world is a place of revelation and the whole of life is sacramental.” So it is that Creation is enough to reveal God to humanity, but it is not enough for its salvation. For that we need Jesus, the Messiah; He is the only one who has the ability to offer us salvation. Thankfully, with a profession of faith that He is Lord and a penitent heart, it is ours for the asking.

“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I(Jesus) will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” ~Matthew 11:28-30 ✝

282. Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living. ~Soren Kierkegaard

February 17, 2014 by nataliescarberry

Crowfoot, chief of the Blackfoot Nation, once asked, “What is life?” He then answered his own question with haunting and graphic wisdom. He said, “it is the flash of the firefly in the night. It is the breath of the buffalo in wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.”

Life, that spark, that whispering breath of God over the void, grows faint in winter. Cloistered behind the grays and browns of gloomy veils, its glow, its hum, its buzz, pales and lowers, but as we near the vernal equinox, Eden’s heartbeat becomes a little more perceptible each day. It has been said that “God pours life into death and death into life without a drop being spilled,” and today I’ve discovered right here in my back yard that through dark, seemingly dead branches life into the lifeless has been poured again without any wasted spillage. It is on the trailing tendrils of a “Clematis armandii” vine that life has flowed silently and secretly until it could no longer be contained. As it burst forth into the newness you see in my photos, it is proof that the Holy One tends His Eden still. His divine, hidden forces of life have become tangibly visible, and a new spark has ignited a tiny flame. Soon a steady succession of similar sparks will fuel a blaze, a blaze that will spread like a wildfire lighting the world anew with evidence of God’s never-ending glory.

Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In His hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of every human being. ~Job 12:9-10 ✝

270. Nature looks dead in winter because her life is gathered into her heart. ~Hugh Macmillan

February 5, 2014 by nataliescarberry

She (nature) withers the plant down to the root
that she may grow it up again fairer and stronger.
She calls her family together
within her inmost home to prepare them for being
scattered abroad upon the face of the earth.
~Hugh Macmillan

Early morning light steals across straw-colored grass and slowly warms the biting chill of a February dawn. Splinters of sunlight glisten and sparkle as they move over the garden’s frost-laden, bare bones. From my vantage point inside I can make out a lone, reddish leaf, not quite ready to be a memory, clinging tenaciously to a branch in the ornamental cherry tree. It reminds me that a wellspring of life lies dormant below in nature’s “inmost home” where “her life is gathered into her heart.” My attention is diverted next to the dogs I hear barking up and down the alleyway. The feral cats must be on the move in search of food. Then birds begin to show up at the feeders and high above their flutterings I see the first squirrels running the high wires. Soon birdsong breaks morn’s silence, and lights start coming on in the once darkened houses around us. The neighborhood is coming alive and gearing up for the day, but no, not I. Since retirement I’ve been able to linger as long as I like most mornings and from my well-situated chair watch the days and the changing seasons pass over my yard. Nature’s recurrent patterns and rhythms have always comforted me, and it’s delightful to be able to partake of her daily feasts. Though evidence of God’s grace is readily apparent in the spectacular moments of life, perhaps sweeter are the ones ferreted out of day to day, ordinary living. These are blessings that are not unlike the contrast of a mass of diamonds scattered out on a dark piece of velvet in which all are lovely but none seems particularly more special than the other and that of a singular diamond’s loveliness on the same piece of fabric which in its aloneness is brilliantly stunning.

For the word of the Lord is right and true; He is faithful in all He does. ~Psalm 33:4 ✝

267. God waits to win back His own flowers as gifts from man’s hands. ~Rabindranath Tagore

February 2, 2014 by nataliescarberry

Flowers don’t worry about how they are going to bloom.
They just open up and turn toward the light
and that makes them beautiful.
~Jim Carrey

Small children pick flowers for their mamas, men bring flowers to women they love, flowers are thrown on a stage after a stellar performance, a bride carries flowers down the aisle at her wedding, returning warriors were once showered with flower petals, a coffin may be surrounded by flowers at a funeral, and on and on go the roles that flowers play in our lives. We adore them and deem them worthy tokens of admiration, love, respect, and honor.

I’ve tended the soil and planted flowers for my own enjoyment and because I feel close to God in my garden, but until I read what Tagore said, I’d never thought about it as being a way to give gifts to God. I’ve known that how we live and what we do with our lives is to be an offering to the Lord and done for His glory, and now the thought of presenting Him with my posies as gifts adds an even greater level of joy to my labors in the garden. Although the time has not yet come for a miraculous flower like the one in the photo to bloom, I offer up this one from last year’s bounty as a thank offering to the Holy One for the coming of another spring and for His continual presence in my life and for all the ways He blesses me. I chose this Star Magnolia because it lights up whatever darkness surrounds it in the same way the stars light the heavens and Jesus lights the darkness around us.

And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. ~Colossians 3:15 ✝

**Over the past 10 years, a plethora of research has shown that flowers increase the levels of positive energy and moods, reduce the likelihood of stress-related depression, and help people feel secure, relaxed, optimistic, and happy.

262. If God had wanted to be a big secret, He would not have created babbling brooks and whispering pines. ~Robert Brault

January 28, 2014 by nataliescarberry

You, O God, are the beginning of all that is.
From your life the fire of the rising sun streams forth.
You are the life-flow of creation’s rivers,
the sap of blood in our veins, earth’s fecundity,
the fruiting of trees, creatures’ birthing,
the conception of new thought, desire’s origin.
~J. Philip Newell

Creation has been described as “the grand volume of God’s utterance,” and isn’t it grand to know that we are a part of that utterance. When we seek God then we should not look “away from ourselves and away from creation, but deep within all that has life” including ourselves. We can and should search for Him in Scripture, but God is found in more than religious moments and environments. Simply put, He speaks to us through two books: Creation and the Bible. Because He exists in all contexts, His light is woven throughout the whole of Creation’s fabric. Whether recognized and acknowledged or not, nothing has life apart from God, and if we want to look for Him, we need to start in places where He yet dwells. I start in my garden because, like all gardens, it is a microcosm of the grander macrocosm of Creation itself, and even in a small piece of Eden is the whole of the mystery of God. In it I see the same ebbing and flowing and rhythms that I see in my life and Creation at large, and I know that I’m as connected to its Source as the infant in a mother’s womb is connected to its life-giving source. One of my friends told me once that when she was in college she would sometimes go lie down in a wheat field and look up at the sky because she knew to go out into Creation was to find Yahweh. She had learned as have I that wherever and whenever we look and listen, we shall find Him, and I pray this is a week where your encounters with the Holy One are many.

I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory. ~Psalm 63:2 ✝

**In the photograph is some French Lavender that I found blooming in my greenhouse today. Even it speaks of the blue of our planet and the heavens.

261. Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see. ~C. S. Lewis

January 27, 2014 by nataliescarberry

Every gardener knows
that under the cloak of winter
lies a miracle–a seed waiting to sprout,
a bulb opening to the light,
a bud straining to unfurl.
And the anticipation nurtures our dream.
~Barbara Winkler

Miracles! Where would any of us be without the existence of miracles? Bad things happen on planet earth, but miraculous things occur on a daily basis too. And many times out of the dust and devastation of catastrophic disasters arise changes for the betterment of life and living conditions as well as the inevitable uplifting examples of an amazing goodness that exist in the human soul. I garden not just because of a love for flowers but more importantly because I find day to day evidence of the mystery and miracles of God and His goodness in the garden’s confines. Spending even the smallest amount of time in my garden brings repeated awarenesses of the Lord’s abiding presence, and that keeps me focused on Him and not on my own smallness or limitations. In spite of Creation’s brokenness and my own heart’s sufferings, I am guided to wellsprings of life and hope amid earth’s unmistakable hallowed workings. Both contentment and enlightenment can be found in the orbs of the heavens, in the green of the earth, in the flowing of its waters, in the warmth of the sun, and in the wind, that like Yahweh, can be felt but not seen. That in turn teaches me how to respond to life and its sometimes terrifying circumstances with a spirit of peace and love instead of anger, confusion, and frustration. Understanding is not promised unto us, but peace that transcends understanding is granted to those who seek the Prince of Peace and search for the true heart of life.

The Mighty One, God, the LORD, speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to the place where it sets. ~Psalm 50:1 ✝

244. The sky puts on the darkening blue coat held for it by a row of ancient trees… ~Ranier Maria Rilke

January 10, 2014 by nataliescarberry

It is a good idea to be alone in a garden
at dawn or dark so that
all its shy presences may haunt you and
possess you in a reverie of suspended thought.
~James Douglas

Reverence rises, a hush falls, and a lone bird sings on in the silence of twilight until there is no more cloud cover, no more noise, no more light. A waxing gibbous moon climbs higher and higher in an azure sky that’s quickly deepening to dark indigo. Silhouetted trees stand like giant sentinels over the winter-ravaged garden. The darkness around me now is steeped in calmness beneath the ancient moon that’s casting its glow through the branches of the huge oak as it heads up to cross over heaven’s dome. Although there’s an element of fear in the dark of night, something sacred draws me into it. Whenever possible, I linger and, in being haunted by all its shy presences, I feel the wonder of Creation beneath the stars.

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established…O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! Psalm 8:3,9 ✝

243. A Summer fog for fair, a Winter fog for rain. ~Weather Lore prediction

January 9, 2014 by nataliescarberry

Oh fog! Oh fog!
What can I say?
You’ve painted the day
A thick shade of grey.
~Adapted excerpt from a poem by Andrew D. Robertson

A textbook definition of fog is that it is a collection of water droplets or ice crystals suspended in the air at or near the Earth’s surface–a cloud of sorts, as it were. Since it wasn’t cold enough last night for this one to have been formed from ice crystals, it had to have been from the little bit of misting rain we got yesterday. Thus, the only strange thing is that I’ve never seen a fog of either kind come so early or last as long as this one has, at least here in north central Texas. And the somewhat dense fog not only wrapped its arms around the morning, but it has also kept us held tightly in its embrace all day long. Furthermore, as darkness closed in on us, it still hadn’t lifted.

The fog is an illusion–
A master of disguise;
Which hides the tangible
Before our very eyes.

It gives an air of mystery
That has long prevailed.
Dangerously intriguing
Is the fog’s foggy veil.
~Excerpts from a poem by W. Salley

In the silence of its thick haze this strange January fog has been reducing visibility and cloaking our city and the outlying areas in its mysterious veil of shyness since first light. In grayness not unlike a pigeon’s feather, it has literally held our world close to the ground all day long, coating all the eyes could see. And lying heavy on all that it encompassed, it kept the sun pushed back which sheltered the earth, smothered most of the day’s colors, and blurred everything as it clung to all possible shapes it could find.

Foggy mist, misty fog
Marvelous manifestation
Of magnificent nature!
~N. Subbarman

The fog descends
in the wee hours of dawn
like a sacred thing.
~John Tiong Chunghoo

Like most weather events, fog is often seen as some kind of spiritual force as it creeps along the ground and across the sky. Actually there seems to be something about all weather phenomena that lends itself to perceptions of sanctity. Perhaps tis so because all such events fall from the heavens overhead or, like the fog, are a part of earth’s mysterious beneath-the-surface workings. And because they are beyond our control, we feel helpless to stop them and sometimes lives as well as homes are lost in the wake of the more forceful ones. Genesis tells us that a mighty wind swept over the waters as God set about the business of Creation, and in His hands He held the elements of earth, air, fire, and water. As He cast them out upon the wind, they were carried throughout the universe on its wild wings. How could one not stand in awe and consider sacred such immense and mysterious powers!

In the beginning when God created the heavens and earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Genesis 1:1 ✝

241. O thou, Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed the winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, each like a corpse within its grave, until thine azure sister of the spring shall blow her clarion o’er the dreaming earth. ~John Davies

January 7, 2014 by nataliescarberry

I paid a dime for a package of seeds
And the clerk tossed them out with a flip.
“We’ve got ‘em assorted for every man’s needs,”
He said with a smile on his lip.
“Pansies and poppies and asters and peas!
Ten cents a package and pick as you please!”

Now seeds are just dimes to the man in the store
And dimes are the things he needs;
And I’ve been to buy them in seasons before,
But have thought of them merely as seeds.
But it flashed through my mind as I took them this time
“You have purchased a miracle here for a dime!”

“You’ve a dime’s worth of power no man can create,
You’ve a dime’s worth of life in your hand!
You’ve a dime’s worth of mystery, destiny, fate,
Which the wisest cannot understand.
In this bright little package, now isn’t it odd?
You’ve a dime’s worth of something known only to God.
~Edgar A. Guest

Nowadays a packet of seeds costs more than a dime; yet one can still buy a packet of “miracles” for a reasonable sum. And the initial investment is small compared to the potential yield not only from the generous number of seeds in each packet but also from the seeds that those plants ultimately produce. I know because my garden is full of plants started from seeds I never bought. Not only that but lots of birds eat well on the excess “birdseed” I don’t have to buy. So it is that in nurturing I am nurtured. By becoming a part of the “cosmic consciousness,” I get to participate in the sacred dance of life.

The Book of Genesis tells us that on the third day the Lord created seed-bearing plants and trees. And from the moment He spoke those words, countless seasons have come and gone and the soil in any given garden has quaked with life from seeds forming in its dark wombs. As the trembling in “dark wintry beds” increased, an impetus not unlike labor pains pushed roots downward and tiny green shoots upwards toward the light until at last new “miracles” became stable,visible, and tangible. As more and more darkness melted away in the blaze of lengthening days and intensifying sunlight, the warp and woof of nature began weaving another springtime into existence. And when the shroud of gloom, winter’s drab garment, was finally sloughed off it was replaced by spring’s brilliant, gauzy garments, garments as colorful as the “silks of Samarkand.”

Isaac sowed seed in that land, and in the same year reaped a hundredfold. ~Genesis 26:12 ✝

239. Blow, blow, thou Winter wind… ~William Shakespeare

January 5, 2014 by nataliescarberry

How can those who do not garden,
who have no lot in the great fraternity of those
who watch the changing year
as it affects the earth and its growth,
how can they keep warm their hearts in winter?
~Francis King

Blustery was the north wind that came up last night. As it ran groaning around the corners of the house, it rattled the windows and doors. But there were no snow flurries nor threats of icy assaults, no misery other than the cold sting in the sound of creaking tree limbs, in the sound of the rushing gale. As the Sabbath dawned, blue were the skies and bright was the light from above, but the relentless, chilling winds kept on and in check the thermometer. The endless gusts and leafy flutterings throughout the day intimated over and over again that tonight will neither be inviting nor without loss. To lower the risks inside faucets will be left to drip, cabinet doors will be opened in front of the pipes below, and thermostats will be turned up higher than usual. So I will not feel the bite of the chilling wind nor will my heart for, oddly enough, I know where lay outside what will keep it warm. Though I know not how they survive, the larkspur seedlings in the photo will make it through this long, cold night as well as others like it. I may not be able to fathom all that God built into Creation, but I can and do praise Him for all His goodness.

From its chamber comes the whirlwind, and cold from scattering winds. ~Job 37:9 ✝

Sacred Touches

Life is a time of purpose and anointed blossoming…

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