May God give you heaven’s dew and earth’s riches… ~Excerpt from Genesis 27:29 ✝
**Photo found on Google+; backgrounds found on PicFont; text added by Natalie
Tag Archives: Sunsets
1151. Cherish sunsets, wild creatures and wild places. Have a love affair with the wonder and beauty of the earth. ~Stewart Udall
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
Wowed! When was the last time you were wowed, really, really wowed? I love being wowed! I’ve always loved being wowed! And for awhile after becoming a grown up, I spent some hard years when I wasn’t wowed by much of anything! I was frequently overwhelmed but not wowed! Then I started a garden and now seldom does a day go by that I’m not wowed by something. And I know I’m an easy mark because I adore flowers and birds and butterflies and bees and sunsets and rain and oceans and such. Nevertheless, easy mark or not, I still maintain that the Lord has made incredible things and that they are meant to wow us! So don’t just look at my flowers; notice the colors, look at the shapes, and the amazing details like the pistils and the anthers.
Beauty is nature’s brag, and must be shown
in courts,
at feasts, and high solemnities,
where most
may wonder at the workmanship.
~John Milton
He who can no longer pause to wonder
and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead;
his eyes are closed.
~Albert Einstein
The point is that when I see a sunset
or a waterfall or something,
for a split second it’s so great,
because for a little bit I’m out of my brain,
and it’s got nothing to do with me.
I’m not trying to figure it out,
you know what I mean?
And I wonder if I can somehow find
a way to maintain that mind stillness.
~Chris Evans
Only those who look with the eyes of children
can lose themselves in the object of their wonder.
~Eberhard Arnold
He(God) performs wonders that cannot be fathomed, miracles that cannot be counted. ~Job 5:9 ✝
**All images taken recently by me in my yard.
1050. Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks. ~Plutarch
I would define, in brief,
the poetry of words as
the rhythmical creation of beauty.
~Edgar Allan Poe
Musical Notation: 1 The physicality of the religious poets should not be taken idly. He or she, who loves God, will look most deeply into His works. Clouds are not only vapor, but shape, mobility, silky sacks of nourishing rain. The pear orchard is not only profit, but a paradise of light. The luna moth, who lives but a few days, sometimes only a few hours, has a pale green wing whose rim is like a musical notation. Have you noticed?
We had a dog once that adored flowers; no matter how briskly she went through the fields, she must stop and consider the lilies, tiger lilies, and other blossoming things along her way. Another dog of our household loved sunsets and would run off in the evenings to the most western part of the shore and sit down on his haunches for the whole show, that pink and peach colored swollenness. Then home he would come trotting in the alpenglow, that happy dog. ~Mary Oliver
The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. ~Psalm 19:1-4 ✝
**All images via Pinterest; collages by Natalie
492. All that we behold is full of blessings. ~William Wordsworth
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
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
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
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
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.
443. August bursts on the scene like a matchflame in the heat and haze of crimson sunsets. ~Edited excerpt from a poem by Elizabeth Maua Taylor
August
When the blackberries hang
swollen in the woods, in the brambles
nobody owns, I spend
all day among the high
branches, reaching
my ripped arms, thinking
of nothing, cramming
the black honey of summer
into my mouth; all day my body
accepts what it is. In the dark
creeks that run by there is
this thick paw of my life darting among
the black bells, the leaves; there is
this happy tongue.
~Mary Oliver
Then the land will yield its fruit, and you will eat your fill and live there in safety. ~Leviticus 25:10 ✝
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! Like Saint Hildegard Lord, may I too be a feather on your holy breath and spread, like seeds, the gospel abroad.
** Photo via Pinterest
381. Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures. ~Henry Ward Beecher
Painting is poetry
that is seen rather than felt,
and poetry is painting
that is felt rather than seen.
~Leonardo da Vinci
COLORS OF MY BRUSH
Blue for the eyes that loved my calm sky,
green for the soft grass we slept on,
white for the lilies we picked,
yellow for small daises,
purple for sunsets,
red for wild lips,
pink for skin,
rose for
you.
~by Andrew Crisci
Creativity is a phenomenon whereby something new and valuable is created. And no matter whether it be by painting, sculpture, architecture, music, writing (poetry, prose, drama), performing arts (theater or dance), film making, photography, or printmaking, the maker of whatever inspired the creative endeavor, has felt, experienced, and/or seen things so moving that the urge to give life to artistic expressions has erupted in his/her very soul. Why? Because inherent in each of our souls is Yahweh’s creative abilities since we are made in His creating image.
Art is a collaboration
between God and the artist,
and the less the artist does
the better.
~André Gide
Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. ~Genesis 2:7 ✝
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!
** Image via Pinterest.
Sacred Touches 