Tag Archives: Reason

1329. Life is a series of little deaths out of which life always returns. ~Charles Feidelson, Jr.

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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.  ~
Barbara Winkler

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Skies were gray early today, and it was cold, decidedly cold. Bare tree branches filigreed the heavens in brown lacy patterns, and up high in one of them, a neighbor’s pecan tree, I spotted a leafy squirrel’s nest. And as on other occasions I pondered how warm it could truly up there be as well as how the fragile looking nest manages to hold together in gusty north winds. However despite my lack of understanding about that, it simply adds yet another piece to my awareness of ordained purposes for fallen autumnal leaves. Not only are they used appaarently as nest building materials but they also protect and enrich the soil, provide nurseries for butterfly larvae/pupae, overwintering habitats for queen bumblebees and other beneficial insects and microbes as well as affording animals like frogs and salamanders places to hunt and hide, offering food for ground-feeding birds, and doing beneficially good things for the soil. That’s why nature’s tutelage never fails to reveal great insights into God’s heart and His grand plan in Creation. For who but a loving Father would not only create life but also build in ways to keep it nurtured and healthy. ‘Tis this that speaks emphatically of Divine design and what keeps me from seeing any validity whatsoever in a “bang bang” theory or the idea that “good or vibes” of fortune just randomly float in and around our lives from somewhere up above in the cosmos. Even if one were to believe that an ancient concentration of energy and matter expanded and exploded at some point in time to create the building blocks of the universe and life and matter as we know it, that still doesn’t explain where, how, and by what hand/means the concentration of such was in existence and/or from where and how “good or bad vibes” emanate. Everything in nature speaks of rhyme and reason, and that can’t be as easily explained away as it being irrelevant or it being written off to obscurity and anonymity. The past and the natural world yet and eternally whisper of a holy Creator!

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. ~Genesis 1:1  ✝

**Photo by Natalie

1313. In the woods we return to reason and faith. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson  

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How beautifully the leaves grow old!
How full of light and color are their last days!
~John Burroughs

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It is not so much for its beauty
that the forest makes a claim upon men’s hearts,
as for that subtle something, that quality of air,
that emanation from old trees that so wonderfully
changes and renews a weary spirit.
~Robert Louis Stevenson

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The forest is not merely an expression or representation of sacredness, nor a place to invoke the sacred; the forest is sacredness itself.  Nature is not merely created by God, nature is God. Whoever moves within the forest can partake directly of sacredness, experience sacredness with his entire body, breath sacredness and contain it within himself, drink the sacred water as a living communion, bury his feet in sacredness, open his eyes and witness the burning beauty of sacredness. ~Richard Nelson

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The forests are the flags of nature.
They appeal to all and awaken
inspiring universal feelings.
Enter the forest and the boundaries
of nations are forgotten. It may be
that some time an immortal pine
will be the flag of a united peaceful world.
~Enos A. Mills

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When you enter a grove peopled with ancient trees, higher than the ordinary, and shutting out the sky with their thickly inter-twined branches, do not the stately shadows of the wood, the stillness of the place, and the awful gloom of this doomed cavern then strike you with the presence of a deity?  ~Seneca

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Take me to a quiet place
with earth under our backs,
cradled in a soft forest glade.
There we’ll point out and
acknowledge things we see
and things we do not.
In solitude we’ll take in the
wisdom offered in each other
and in the hum of the forest.
~Phoebe Wahl

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Underfoot, leaves of  wondrous autumn colors
crunch beneath my feet as I tread on and upon
earth’s hallowed ground to capture a piece of the
Lord’s reddened glory laid upon a wooden altar!
~Natalie Scarberry

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When Jesus saw their faith, he said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven.” ~Luke 5:20  ✝

**Notice the lady bug on the leaf in the first photo. I love it when I get an unexpected bonus on a photo. All photos were taken this last week by me.

572. The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

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When the oak is felled
the whole forest echoes with its fall,
but a hundred acorns are sown
in silence by an unnoticed breeze.
~Thomas Carlyle

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A tiny acorn falls from a towering tree. An even tinier seed drops from a flowering plant. Deciduous trees and shrubs lose their sheltering leaves. Perennials die down to the shivering ground when the first hard freeze comes, and the flourishing grass withers and turns brown. At a glance there is no telling proof of life as the sun and moon pass over barren fields throughout the short, cold days and the long colder nights of late autumn and wintertime. Yet the world doesn’t pass into nothingness. What the Lord spoke into the void remains alive in dark, inner chambers where it lies in wait, waiting patiently with expectancy for moments in time when a spark will activate the memory of what Yahweh spoke, and once again life emerges from sacred, secret places. Then sunlight and rain, filled with the same kind of holiness, nurtures the new growth and urges it on to another round of completion. For in the faithful and ongoing rites of passage in springtime under the multitudinous orbs of heaven, life goes on directed by the ancient and engulfing rhyme and reason of the Maker of Heaven and Earth who is as omnipresent now as He has ever and always been.

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. ~2 Corinthians 4:18   ✝

**Image via Pinterest