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.

265. Of the six million species on the planet, only man makes language. Words. What’s more — in evidence of the Divine — we string symbols together and then write them down, where they take on a life of their own and breathe outside of us. ~Charles Martin

January 31, 2014 by nataliescarberry

I write because there is nothing larger in life than
To be read, maybe even reread by another–
To be examined and then verified of being
Understood, or trusted like a saint–
I don’t imagine being immortalized
Or stacked in a library for hands with a million
Oppositions to wander through for
Poetic justice either–

Perhaps purpose is purchased or earned or even
Inherited by some mystic right–
But it is my reasoning I hearken to,
All that I am resonates with inscribing, putting down
My Self on the papyrus of today,
Like a manuscript never quite decrypt but
Interesting to the soul’s eye
For perpetual encounter.
~Deborah Jeanne Avila

All the kings of the earth shall praise you, O Lord for they have heard the words of your mouth. Psalm 138:4 ✝

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 ✝

259. If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden. ~From THE SECRET GARDEN by Frances Hodgson Burnett

January 25, 2014 by nataliescarberry

At that moment a very good thing was happening to her. Four good things had happened to her, in fact, since she came to Misselthwaite Manor. She had felt as if she had understood a robin and that he had understood her; she had run in the wind until her blood had grown warm; she had been healthily hungry for the first time in her life; and she had found out what it was to be sorry for someone. ~Excerpted from THE SECRET GARDEN by Frances Hodgson Burnett

My first move of the day is from the bed to my recliner so I can sit a while and enjoy whatever is going on out in the yard. I’ve still not seen any robins, but as I kept watching the Cardinals come today to my feeders, their flashes of red were enough to bring thoughts of Burnett’s novel, The SECRET GARDEN. Her inspirational tale of transformation and empowerment for two children with very dim outlooks and prospects touches my heart on several different levels. When Mary finds the key to the secret garden, the “magical” powers of transformation come within her reach, and eventually she and Colin are “saved” and offered the prospects of present and future goodness and happiness. I didn’t begin gardening until much later in life than they, but my discovery of the healing power inherent in all living things and God’s abiding presence in Creation was a pivotal moment of transformation in my life as well. So I decided to post some lines from the novel tonight along with photographs (via Pinterest) in hopes of relaying the Divine’s “magic” that captured Mary, Colin, and me.

“Nothing in the world is quite as adorably lovely as a robin when he shows off and they are nearly always doing it.”

“…the immense, tender, terrible, heart-breaking beauty and solemnity of Eggs.”

“Never thee stop believin’ in th’ Big Good Thing an’ knowin’ th’ world’s full of it – and call it what tha’ likes. Tha’ wert singin’ to it when I come into t’ garden.”

“There’s naught as nice as th’ smell o’ good clean earth, except th’ smell o’ fresh growin’ things when th’ rain falls on ’em.”

“And the secret garden bloomed and bloomed and every morning revealed new miracles.”

“However many years she lived, Mary always felt that ‘she should never forget that first morning when her garden began to grow.”

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

257. The tree is a slow, enduring force straining the win the sky. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

January 23, 2014 by nataliescarberry

Have you ever noticed a tree
standing naked against the sky, how beautiful it is?
All its branches outlined and in its nakedness,
there is a poem, there is a song…
When the spring comes, it again fills the tree
with the music of many leaves.
And this is the way of life.
~J. Krishnamurti

Trees don’t just provide shade or rhyme and lyric for mortals; they are frequented by and home to an assortment of wildlife. For example birds not only perch and sing in their lofty heights; they build nests in them as do squirrels who also use the branches as connecting highways to get them from one branch or tree to another. When it’s winter as it is now and the trees are leafless, I can see the little fluffy-tailed acrobats make leaps, sometimes very daring ones, from one branch or tree to another as they work back and forth or up and down gathering acorns and building nests. This week while I was observing their antics, I started looking at the differing filigreed patterns of our naked trees. It was then I noticed the combined density of several trees in the northeast corner of our lot. They obscure the heavens now almost as much as they would when in full leaf. In this aerial thicket of woodiness the horizontal branches of my willow tree cross in front of the vertical branches of neighboring trees, and so their poetry or music is more of a series of mingled couplets or vocal duets as they make their “endless efforts to speak to the listening heavens.”

The trees of the field shall know that I am the Lord… ~Ezekiel 17:23a ✝

256. The best place to seek God is in a garden. You can dig for Him there. ~George Bernard Shaw

January 22, 2014 by nataliescarberry

Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies.
I hold you here root and all, in my hand flower–
but if I could understand what you are
root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is!
~Alfred Lord Tennyson

Whenever I read Tennyson’s poem or see a garden wall I think of Burnett’s novel, THE SECRET GARDEN, and then I find myself trying to imagine what Tennyson’s crannied wall and the garden walls at Misselthwaite Manor looked like. I’ve read that walled growing spaces date back to the earliest of Persian gardens and that their function, especially in the northern temperate zones, was to shelter a garden from frost and wind. Since purportedly the sheltering walls raised the ambient temperature inside a garden by several degrees, I’m guessing they were made of heavy stones. Although the garden walls in Tennyson’s poem and Hodgson’s novel no doubt were constructed similarly and to serve the same purpose, the practicality of such, is not the point of the two tales. The two literary pieces have to do with the impact of encountering the Ancient of Days or the contemplation of His mystery that often takes place within a garden’s walls. Every garden in a very real sense is a piece of Eden, and in Eden man inevitably encountered Him by whose Hands both he and it were made. As Tennyson grasped the entirety of a little flower in his hand, he voiced a firm belief that comprehending its mystery would lead to an unraveling of the ultimate conundrum, man and God. And in THE SECRET GARDEN the lives of two children were resurrected and subsequently infused with that same mysterious “stuff of life” after holy “place” and “elemental” grace had had their way with them.

And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; that there he put man whom he had formed…They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze… ~Genesis 2:8 and Genesis 3:8a ✝

252. Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better. ~Albert Einstein

January 18, 2014 by nataliescarberry

The cycle of nature—the progress from seed to fruition to dying-off and then renewal in the spring—was mirrored in the wild fields and the cultivated garden alike, while the fragility of harvest—the possible interruption of the cycle by drought, wind, or other natural calamities— established the pattern of how humans understood the workings of the cosmos. The oldest of surviving sacred stories have their roots in the garden and reflect how humanity sought to understand the changeable patterns of their world… ~Peg Streep

There is nothing better for mortals than to eat and drink, and find enjoyment in their toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God; for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment. For to the one who pleases him God gives wisdom and knowledge… ~Ecclesiastes 2:24-26a ✝

**In the photo is a pink poppy in bloom next to one that has already lost the petals which surrounded its seed pod.

251. More than anything, I must have flowers, always, and always. ~Claude Monet

January 17, 2014 by nataliescarberry

When we look deeply into the heart of a flower,
we see clouds, sunshine, minerals, time, the earth,
and everything else in the cosmos in it.
~Thich Nhat Hanh

Color is my daylong obsession, joy, and torment. ~Claude Monet

The richness I achieve comes from nature, the source of my inspiration. ~Claude Monet

I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers. ~Claude Monet

Like Monet, I must always, always have flowers, and I’ve discovered that cut flowers do little to satisfy that hunger. I need to have flowers that, as in nature, are alive and growing, and to that end my greenhouse is a godsend. From my chair in our family room I have a clear shot at the back shelf through the window in its door, and so that space is reserved during the winter months for potted flowers that aren’t suited to our Texas climate except as cool weather annuals. Also like Monet, I must have color, lots and lots of color, and so the more bright and colorful the flowers are the better. And again, like Monet I wanted to become a painter, but that’s where the likeness between us ends. I may have found a way to have flowers and color but not the talent to translate that beauty onto a canvas. However, the Lord in His gracious goodness did not let it end there. During my years as a teacher I was asked at one time to sponsor the high school’s yearbook. During that 5 year period I learned from the book’s professional publisher how to take photos, how to edit and crop them, and how to lay them out on a page in an eye-appealing manner. Then after I retired, with that training still in place, I discovered the amazing technology of digital photography, and voila, who’s to say an artist of sorts wasn’t born.

For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work; at the works of your hands I sing for joy. Psalm 92:4 ✝

248. I look back with gladness to the day when I found the path to the land of heart’s desire… ~Mrs. George Cran

January 14, 2014 by nataliescarberry

Earth, thou great footstool of our God,
who reigns on high;
thou fruitful source of all our
raiment, life, and food;
our house, our parent, our nurse,
and our teacher.
~Edited and adapted excerpt from Isaac Watts

What’s that whisper in the wind? Do you hear it? Listen, there it is again! Oh, I know. It’s that ancient and seductive call that tempts the gardener to come and play in the dirt? And it doesn’t take much bidding before this one can do naught but hearken to the bewitching pleas.

For days now I’ve heard the “call” because even though winter is still quite young, January has obliged the “voice” by bringing some warmer days. So several days ago I began clearing my flower beds of autumn’s dead, leafy debris, cutting off seed heads to be scattered elsewhere, and pruning weak, leggy growth off shrubs and roses. Working close to the soil let me, as usual, hear earth’s heartbeat, and that sweet sound in turn spread a soothing balm over the spiritual doldrums.

Ironically, however, it occurred to me as I worked today that I was blessing the warmth of the same sun that only a few months ago I’d been cursing for its relentless waves of miserable heat. That brought me face to face afresh with the truth that too much of anything spoils even the very best of things, that there is a purpose, if not understanding, in all things, and that gratitude, when in comfort or lack, is the only appropriate response to a day’s gifts. So, you see, it was more than an ordinary call or faint heartbeat that I’d heard; I’d encountered the Teacher and He, leading me in and out of flesh and spirit, had shown me, again, wisdom growing in the garden’s “soil.”

…and the Lord your God will make you abundantly prosperous in all your undertakings, in the fruit of your body, in the fruit of your livestock, and in the fruit of your soil. ~Deuteronomy 30:9a ✝

247. The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep. ~Rumi

January 14, 2014 by nataliescarberry

Every morning is a fresh beginning.
Every day is the world made new.
Today is a new day.
Today is my world made new.
I have lived all my life up to this moment,
to come to this day.
This moment–this day–is as good as any moment in all eternity.
I shall make of this day–a heaven on earth.
This is my day of opportunity.
~Dan Custer

Welcome the new day; it is a new creation. Greet it with gratitude. It is a nonrepeatable gift; it is a promise of resurrection. Miss not the day’s beauty. Miss not the joy. Miss not the wonder. Miss not chances to make the world a better place. Miss not opportunities to praise God!

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. ~Lamentations 3:22-23 ✝

Sacred Touches

Life is a time of purpose and anointed blossoming…

Tag Archives: Lord