Tag Archives: Nature

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

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the air is different today
the wind sings with a new tone
sighing of changes coming…
~Rhawk, Alban Elfed

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“Summer, barbarous in beauty,” ended yesterday in the autumnal equinox’s circle of equal light and equal night. Now we can, during the course of autumn’s mellow morns and brisk eves, savor long our harvests and go deep into our reflections of what has been accomplished and learned on this year’s trip around the sun. Harsh wintry chills, though soon to be on the horizon, will not set in for quite a while, and so there are yet ample hours before winter’s seclusion is imposed to spend time in nature’s haunts and reminisce about the fruitfulness of all that has come to us this year. So, let us all joyfully enter the autumn courts of Creation with what remains of our annual “time coin” and ponder why we were given this year, what reached in and touched us, and how deep the imprint of our encounters and experiences went. In so doing we shall be able to assess what we began that might endure, what or whom we impacted with goodness, where we allowed ourselves to receive and give love, as well as when and where we made a positive difference in the world.

For the LORD your God will bless you in all your harvest and in all the work of your hands, and your joy will be complete. ~Deuteronomy 16:15b   ✝

**Image via Pinterest

494. Every dew-drop and rain-drop had a whole heaven within it. ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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How cunningly nature hides 
every
wrinkle of her inconceivable antiquity
under roses and violets and morning dew.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Earth’s liquid jewelry, wrought of air.
The dew ‘tis of the tears which stars weep, sweet with joy.
~Philip James Bailey

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Angels in the early morning
may be seen the dews among.
Stooping, plucking, smiling, flying.
Do the buds belong to them?
~Emily Dickinson

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That breath you just took; it was a gift! The day that lies before you; it’s a gift!  And it’s a unique gift, a new creation of God’s ageless story. Twenty four hours a day, 7 days a week, His promise of renewal is delightfully visible especially early in the day when everything sparkles with the kind of magic that sometimes can be seen in the dew on roses and other things.

It’s easy to believe in magic when you’re young.
Anything you couldn’t explain was magic then.
It didn’t matter if it was science or a fairy tale.
Electricity and elves were both infinitely mysterious
and equally possible–elves probably more so.
~Charles de Lint

I may no longer be young but while birds call to one another and bees busily work, it’s easy still for me to imagine that garden fairies are blessing the flowers and sprinkling them with dew because they  glisten and shine like Yahweh’s glory.  And it is when I sense His Presence in the light and  the sweet aromas that arise from the flowers and the soil that I fall in love with the Lord of Life all over again.

Listen, O heavens, and I will speak; hear, O earth, the words of my mouth. Let my teaching fall like rain and my words descend like dew, like showers on new grass, like abundant rain on tender plants, I will proclaim the name of the LORD. Oh, praise the greatness of our God! ~Deuteronomy 32:1-3    ✝

Thank you, Lord, for my piece of Eden here on a small portion of the Texas prairie and for Your redeeming work on the cross at Calvary.

** Images via Pinterest

 

492. All that we behold is full of blessings. ~William Wordsworth

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You pray in your distress and in your need;
would that you might pray also in the fullness
of your joy and in your days of abundance.
~Khalil Gibran

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Looking out across a freshly mowed lawn
Sunrises and sunsets ablaze with color
A doe running in the field with her fawn

Quiet summer nights that are mild
Followed by a raucous chatter of birds in the morn
The infectious laughter of a child

Reading a new book by candlelight
Laughing with family and friends
And summer storms through the night

So many things to be thankful for
So many things to enjoy
So many things already and so much more
~By Pamela B. in VOICES OF NATURE

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. ~James 1:17   ✝

**Image via Pinterest

490. Were there no God, we would be in this glorious world with grateful hearts and no one to thank. ~Christina Rossetti

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La plus grande des joies
C’est de croire en Toi
Et de se réfugier en Toi
Père des Mondes,
Et de l’Enfant en moi.
~Poème written by Frédéric at: http://poemsandpoemes.wordpress.com/about/
Translation:
The greatest joy
It is to believe in You
And take refuge in You
Father of the Worlds
And of the Child in me.

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Recently I was up early enough to witness dawn’s first golden glimmer of light pierce holes in the dense, leafy green darkness at the back fence. Then as the morning light lifted night’s dark shades higher and higher, the fragrance of Autumn Clematis floated along on the bright morn’s happy wings. Soon butterflies, creatures of the wind, danced and rejoiced while happy voices on the TV echoed in celebration within the walls of a sanctuary. Therein the sunlight fell in brilliant fragments through the stained glass windows, and all that those colorful bits of light touched seemed to be filled with the same kind of holiness that I had felt streak through our trees.

“To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature.  Most persons do not see the sun.  At least they have a very superficial seeing.  The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and heart of the child.  The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Lord I love the Temple where you live, where your glory is. ~Psalm 26:8   ✝

** Image via Pinteest

487. I love red. I love all colors. Great shades of blue, you find them in nature. They’re all magic. ~Bryan Batt

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La couleur bleue
Toujours
Me parle de Dieu
~Written by Frédéric at: http://poemsandpoemes.wordpress.com/about/
Translation:
The color blue
always
speaks to me about God

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By reading the scriptures
I am so renewed that all nature
seems renewed around me.
The sky seems to be
a pure, a cooler blue,
the trees a deeper green.
The whole world is charged
with the glory of God and I
feel fire and music under my feet.
~Thomas Merton

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Life has loveliness to sell,
all beautiful and splendid things,
blue waves whitened on a cliff,
soaring fire that sways and sings,
and children’s faces looking up,
holding wonder like a cup.
~Sara Teasdale

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Praise the Lord. How good it is to sing praises to our God, how pleasant and fitting to praise Him! ~Psalm 147:1   ✝

**All three photos are of different varieties of morning glories that have bloomed in my yard.

477. With finger in her solemn lip, night hushed the shadowy earth. ~Margaret Deland

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Night is a dead monotonous period under a roof;
but in the open world it passes lightly,
with its stars and dews and perfumes, and the hours
are marked by changes in the face of Nature.
~Robert Louis Stevenson

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A black and white cat has leisurely strolled across our patio for several nights in a row now, and it, like all the other felines who wander by, doesn’t seem to be the least bit interested in or fearful of us as long as we’re on the other side of our patio doors. Actually some nights it’s like a holiday parade out there, only it’s peopled by cats, possums, and raccoons, all of whom are the suspected culprits of destructive mischief such as the broken rose stem I discovered this morning. Then some nights, in addition to all that activity, there are the gecko lizards who like to run up and down our patio doors chasing bugs. So it is that though the enchanting yard and gardens have disappeared into the darkness, even in our absence life and the living prevail in the hush of night.

I call our glass patio doors, our big screen TV because the indoor cats and I have wiled away many an hour just watching what goes on outside. In so doing I’ve witnessed a wide spectrum of good and bad, feast and famine, and life and death over the years. And I’ve always found a comforting harmony and balance in those opposing forces. For example it’s easy to lose a sense of how beautiful a garden or the earth in general is without a picture of the kind of devastation that a storm or a drought or some such can do to it. That’s why I think the beauty of spring is so breathtaking; it comes after the landscape has been ravaged by winter’s often harsh and cruel assaults. In the same way, who among us could ever begin to bear the brutality in the world without having also witnessed life’s abundant goodness.

I love the house where you live, O LORD, the place where your glory dwells.  ~Psalm 26:8   ✝

 **Image via Pinterest

475. To one who has been long in city pent, ‘tis sweet to look into the fair and open face of heaven-to breathe a prayer full in the smile of the blue firmament. ~John Keats

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Nature is man’s teacher.
She unfolds her treasures to his search
unseals his eye, illumes his mind, purifies his heart;
an influence breathes from all the sights
and sounds of existence.
~Alfred Billings Street

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It is not so much being “city pent” that keeps me from looking long into the “fair and open face” of the heavens in summer. It’s from being “house pent.” However, to keep my heat-driven incarceration inside my air-conditioned home from totally stifling my spiritual breathing, I hungrily emerge out of doors for a while very early and/or very late in the day. Outside and under the heavens I am able at last to breathe long and deep in prayer. According to Howard Pyle, “The stories of childhood leave an indelible impression, and their author always has a niche in the temple of memory from which the image is never cast out to be thrown on the rubbish heap of things that are outgrown and outlived.” In my childhood nature and her sweet stories left a profound impression in my memory. Because as Pyle suggests that impression was not thrown on “the rubbish heap” and because late in life I reentered nature’s haunts by means of a garden, I was brought back to a reverent and devoted relationship with the Maker of my soul and Creation.

Last night when I was out, I noticed that a pure white Angel’s Trumpet had opened, and it was still there briefly this morning. The brilliance of its whiteness reminded me of the temporal dominion of any kind of darkness and the inevitable return of light. Then when I came inside, I read an email from a friend in which he quoted “Peace is seeing the sunrise and sunset and knowing who to thank.” Though neither he nor I knew whom to credit for the thought, we always know who to thank for everything. So thank you, Lord, for sunrises and sunsets as well as endings and beginnings. For you see the Angel in the Trumpet intimated that the heat beast is on its last legs.

The earth is filled with Your love, Lord; teach me Your decrees. ~Psalm 119:64   ✝

Lord God, Your breath is within me, and I will honor and praise you with every breath that I breathe.

463. I sit here transfixed, bewitched by the dragonfly stealing nectar’s kiss. ~Georgina Blankscreen

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In The Flutter Of Gossamer Wings

When the ire of Nature changes to Summer
and flowery blankets are lain far and wide,
amidst valleys and meadows I hear a murmur
of that silent flutter called “dragonfly glide.”

On cool crystal air so clean and yet fresh
the arrival of the season fills insect nostrils,
with exotic fragrances that seem to mesh
as over a pond, his thirst it gently fills.

This creature with eyes of 30,000 lenses
with a slender body so fragile and thin,
most excellent a flier he hovers, then senses
to do a round loop-d-loop on wings twin.

And to even fly backwards, oh what a surprise
like a tiny chopper skipping on water’s surface,
and it’s weird that he has those bulging eyes
this dragon called insecta odonata is “boss.”

Comes in many shapes, sizes and odd colors,
flying in such grace on those gossamer wings,
this sleek dragonfly, when seen, my soul stirs
for God in his splendor created such things!
~By Rick Fernandez, Sr.

Ascribe to the Lord the glory due His name; bring an offering and come before Him. Worship the Lord in the splendor of His holiness. 1 Chronicles 16:29   ✝

Thank you, Lord 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 name for all that you have given and done.

**Image of the dragonfly via Pinterest

 

459. The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“Grace unfolds with every breath You’ve blown, Lord…”

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“The praise we sing is on the breath you breathed in us…”

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“So it is our hearts beat out the rhythm of a love song…”

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Why I Wake Early

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and crotchety–

best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light–
good morning, good morning, good morning.

Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.

~Mary Oliver

Let everything that has breath praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! Psalm 150:6   ✝

Thank you, Lord 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 name for all that you have given and done.

457. When you bow deeply to the universe, it bows back; when you call out the name of God, it echoes inside you. ~Morihei Ueshiba

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Divine Protector! let my prayer
Be wafted on the morning air,
Bright as the bird that soars on high,
Light as the breeze which fans the sky,
Swift as the light’ning through the air…
All nature flows in rapturous lay,
Life beams in one eternal ray…
The prayer of soul—the soul of prayer,
How unrestrained upon the air,
As perfume from the beauteous flower
Is breathed in sweetness more than power,
So let our incense fill the air
With deep humility and prayer.
~Mrs. H. A. Adams

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Lord, oh beautiful and beloved Lord
Fill me with Your Heavenly Peace
Hold me in Your calm, strong embrace
and fill me with Heaven

I stand before You
tired and weary
Lift me into the quiet room
of Your Heart
and let me rest
in Your Love

Lord, oh beautiful and beloved Lord
Fill me with Your Heavenly Peace
I have walked through a storm today
and I need the stillness of Your Heart

Let me hold Your Hand, dear Lord
and walk with me
I am a vessel for Your Love
but today,
I need You to carry me

Lord, oh beautiful and beloved Lord
Fill me with Your Heavenly Peace
Hold me in Your calm, strong embrace
and fill me with Heaven
Prayer by Trini at: http://pathsofthespirit.wordpress.com/2014/08/14/may-you-have-peace/

Hear me when I call, O God of righteousness! You have relieved me in my distress; Have mercy on me, and hear my prayer. Psalm 4:1    ✝

Thank you, Lord 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 name for all that you have given and done.

** Image via loveliegreenie.tumblr.com