Tag Archives: Righteousness

1445. It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know of “wonder and humility.” ~Rachel Carson

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Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen,
among the beauties and mysteries of the earth,
are never alone or weary of life.
~Rachel Carson

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What is that I hear? What is it I see? What’s that smell floating along on the breeze? Are they things returning once again to remind me that just like that with a sound, a sight, and a scent winter falls slowly but surely into spring, glorious, glorious spring? Could it be that time of year has come when the greens are greener, the colors are fresher, the fragrances sweeter? Have we at last traversed winter’s domain of quietness, of drabness, of blandness to find once more that hope is tangible, love is in the air, and the “beauties and mysteries” of the earth yet have a way of filling old and young alike with wonder and humility? If so, which of these photographic delights might be the “proof in the pudding?”

Is it the forsythia I saw above?

Or is it this that was right behind it?

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Or is it these side by side hellebores?

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Or perhaps it is the glowing whiteness of this Magnolia Stellata?

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Faithfulness springs forth from the earth, and righteousness looks down from heaven. ~Psalm 85:11 ✝

**All photos taken by Natalie

1159. Words are such small things, like confetti in the brain, and yet they are color and clarify everything; they stain the mind or warp the feelings. ~Diane Ackerman

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Ecstasy is what everyone craves —
not love or sex, but hot-blooded, soaring intensity,
in which being alive is a joy and a thrill.
That enravishment doesn’t give meaning to life,
and yet without it life seems meaningless.
~Diane Ackerman

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In the name of the daybreak
and the eyelids of morning
and the wayfaring moon
and the night when it departs,
In the name of the sun and its mirrors
and the day that embraces it
and the cloud veils drawn over it
and the uttermost night
and the male and the female
and the plants bursting with seed
and the crowning seasons
of the firefly and the apple,
I will honor all life —
wherever and in whatever form
it may dwell—on Earth my home,
and in the mansions of the stars.
~Excerpted verses from a poem
by Diane Ackerman

Whoever pursues righteousness and love finds life, prosperity, and honor. ~Proverbs 21:21  ✝

**All images (my enravishments) were taken by me in my yard.

1045. No matter how much we try to run away from this thirst for the answer to life, for the meaning of life, the intensity only gets stronger and stronger. We cannot escape these spiritual hungers. ~Ravi Zacharias

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Imagine, for example, birds.
When they look out at the world,
they have a sense that they are alive.
If they are in pain, they can do something about it.
If they have hunger or thirst, they can satisfy that.
It’s this basic feeling that there is
life ticking away inside of you.
~Antonio Damasio,
Professor of Neuroscience at UCLA

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I had such a longing for virtue, for company.
I wanted Christ to be as close as the cross I wear.
I wanted to read and serve, to touch the altar linen.
Instead I went back to the woods where
not a single tree turns its face away.

Instead I prayed, oh Lord, let me be
something useful and unpretentious.
Even the chimney swift sings.
Even the cobblestones have a task to do, and do it well.
Lord, let me be a flower, even a tare; or a sparrow.
Or the smallest bright stone in a ring worn by someone
brave and kind, whose name I will never know.
~Mary Oliver

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. ~Matthew 5:6  ✝

**Images via Pinterest; collage by Natalie

659. March is a month of considerable frustration – it is so near spring and yet across a great deal of the country the weather is still so violent and changeable that outdoor activity in our yards seems light years away. ~Thalassa Cruso

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Winds of March, we welcome you,
There is work for you to do.
Work and play and blow all day,
Blow the Winter wind away.
~Author Unknown

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March bustles in on windy feet
And sweeps my doorstep and my street.
She washes and cleans with pounding rains,
Scrubbing the earth of winter stains.
She shakes the grime from carpet green
Till naught but fresh new blades are seen.
Then, house in order, all neat as a pin,
She ushers gentle springtime in.
~Susan Reiner

Faithfulness springs forth from the earth, and righteousness looks down from heaven. ~Psalm 85:11   ✝

431. Let mystery have its place in you; do not be always turning up your whole soil with the ploughshare of self-examination, but have a little fallow corner in your heart ready for any seed the winds may bring… ~Henri-Frédéric Amiel

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The morning-glory’s blossoming
Will soon be coming round
We see their rows of heart-shaped leaves
Upspringing from the ground.
~Maria White Lowell

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breathing in and out
I
picture morning glories…
blue, bluer, bluest
~Kirsty Karkow

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I love and am fascinated by the mystery of seeds, the ones that I sow, the ones that nature sows, and the ones the Lord sows. The morning glory vines I’ve had for several years now came not from the work of my own hands. They’ve been self-sown, and each year the vines have come up more numerous and hardier than before. Perhaps, it would be so then that if, as Amiel suggests, we left a little fallow corner in our hearts, the “winds” that blow through our lives might bring hardier beauty and more powerful strengths than ever before.

For as the soil makes the sprout come up and a garden causes seeds to grow, so the Sovereign Lord will make righteousness and praise spring up before all nations. ~Isaiah 61:11   ✝

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.

387. And her flowers reward her work by their magnificence. ~Donald Hall

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We have a little garden,
A garden of our own,
And every day we water there
The seeds that we have sown.

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We love our little garden,
And tend it with such care,
You will not find a faded leaf
Or blighted blossom there.

~Anonymous nursery rhyme, as quoted in

Cecily Parsley’s Nursery Rhymes by Beatrix Potter

For as the soil makes the sprout come up and a garden causes seeds to grow, so the Sovereign Lord will make righteousness and praise spring up before all nations. Isaiah 61:11 ✝

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 good news of the gospel abroad.

** Image via Pinterest

371. With rake and seeds and sower, and hoe and line and reel, when meadows shrill with “peeping” and the old world wakes from sleeping, who wouldn’t be a grower that has a heart to feel? ~Frederick Frye Rockwell

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It was the busy hour
When from the city hardware store
Emerged a gentleman, who bore
One hoe, one spade, one wheelbarrow.

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From there our hero promptly went
Into a seed establishment,
And for these things his money spent:
One peck of bulbs, one job-lot-shrub,
and one quart of assorted seeds.

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He has a garden under way
And if he’s fairly lucky, say,
He’ll have, about the end of May
One one squash vine, one eggplant, one budding flower.
~Author Unknown

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Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. 2 Corinthians 9:10 ✝

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!

 ** Images via Pinterest.

338. Memory is the diary we all carry about with us. ~Oscar Wilde

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Memory is a way of holding onto
the things you love,
the things you are,
the things you never want to lose.
~From the television show The Wonder Years

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More than half a century ago my father died on this date, and yet I listen still for his voice, a voice held dear and silenced forever when his mortal heart ceased to beat. In memory his deeds and words echo on in my heart, and neither the tears of sadness I’ve cried nor the moments of bitter resentment about his early death I’ve endured have muted the sounds of that beloved voice. Regrettably this was a door, and it has not been a singular one, that closed long long before it should have, and none of the ranting or raving or railing against any of it has altered the impact of the losses. The simple truth is that time marches unstoppably on as season after season passes over the fields of our lives; people continually move in and out, and there is a never ending series of opening and closing doors along the way. In the aftermath of unavoidable, grievous experiences our faith is tested, tried, and sometimes even forsaken, but the Holy One who walks with us is never absent nor is the offer of His gift of grace ever retracted.

How very precious every breath and every moment of life is! Declarations of love to family and friends and the Lord should be vocalized over and over again, and we need to hear the same from the ones we cherish. If such things are left unsaid what goes unspoken leaves gaping holes and wounds in the human heart, and the subsequent path to healing is enough of a long and arduous road as it is.

In you, Lord, I have taken refuge; let me never be put to shame; deliver me in your righteousness. Turn your ear to me, come quickly to my rescue; be my rock of refuge, a strong fortress to save me. Since you are my rock and my fortress, for the sake of your name lead and guide me. Psalm 31:1-3  ✝

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!

**Images via Pinterest

329. Every April, God rewrites the Book of Genesis. ~Author Unknown

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That God once loved a garden
we learn in holy writ.
And seeing gardens in the Spring
I well can credit it.
~Winifred Mary Letts

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There’s just something very reassuring about springtime, isn’t there? It tells us that what God put in place is still in place and that renewal is as much a part of life as anything else.  Death may be undeniable, but so is life.

Come rain and speak of rivers and seas and holy healing waters.
Rise sun and speak of nurturing warmth and holy grace.
Blossom flower and speak of beauty and holy mysteries.
Hum bee and speak of faithful and ordained holy purpose.
Sing bird and speak of joy and grateful thanksgiving.
Beat heart and speak of pulsing rhythms and coursing holiness.
Move breath and speak of God within and holy beginnings.
Walk feet and speak of the road to Emmaus and holy encounters.
Twinkle stars and speak of the void filled by God’s holy, life-giving hands.
Speak silence of the Ancient of Days who’s waiting to be heard.
Shine light, drive darkness away, and speak of Christ’s redemptive work.
Come love and speak of peace and sacred surrender.

Truth shall spring out of the earth; and righteousness shall look down from heaven. ~Psalm 85:11 ✝

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!

**Photo via Pinterest.

321. Hurt no living thing: ladybird, nor butterfly, nor moth with dusty wing. ~Christina Georgina Rossetti

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Winged insect feeding
for eons on nectar or
pollen and aphids

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Wake you at twilight
In the greening of the year
To hunt and lay eggs

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In gardens galore
and parks, meadows, or elsewhere
rid you plants from harm

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Found you I at dusk
sheltered in magnolia’s bloom
resting from a feast

For as the soil makes the sprout come up and a garden causes seeds to grow, so the Sovereign Lord will make righteousness and praise spring up before the nations. ~Isaiah 61:11 ✝

Thank you, Jesus, that you save, you heal, you restore, and you reveal Your Father’s heart to us!