Late summer has a way of bringing out the poetry. Everything that surrounds us is practically perfection, here, at least.
The leaves are full and the sun shines gently, not the harsh of early August.
Fruits are ripened, plants are mature.
The work of the harvest consumes the time and energy of farmers and gardeners, but those of us who simply seek to tame our property have a respite from the wild growth that characterized the first months of summer.
I have had a revisiting of my illness that I experienced aboard my cruise ship. It was Sunday night when I started feeling a little feverish again. My throat was sore the next day and I have been lying low all week in hopes of a good rest being the antidote to it all.
Feeling blue/dark hearted this time of year is also one of my biorhythms. It started in my childhood when I dreaded the end of summer, the beginning of the school year.
Perhaps a tendency toward melancholy nurtured my periodic bouts of depression. Anyway I do experience depression, and I find all sorts of ways to deal with it, not chemically.
Other than caffeine. perhaps.
As I got older I became aware of hayfever, and this year hasn’t been too bad, but I think I’ve had a touch of it.
A trifecta of yuk; being sick, hayfever, depression.
But my mom told me about a conversation she had with her Swedish grandson-in-law. He said there was a monk in Scandinavia that learned how to deal with Seasonal Affect Disorder by embracing the dark—leaning in to it, finding the silver linings of it. It seemed an effective plan, and birthed “Hygge” and candlelight, fika and fellowship.
I will let the pain in my heart have its way today, the grief that visits me unannounced —perhaps not as frequently as before. The loss that I still calculate from time to time.
I am feeling the privilege to be alive today.
Humans are the exact middle of the created universe some physicist once said—between the seemingly endless boundaries of our known existence and the micro string theories that mathematically present themselves—God made us the center of that.
He chose to bring eternal beings into existence in this precious womb of planet earth.
What a great privilege to be His loved creation.
Can we not appreciate His greatness?
He is awesome.
Some chipmunks chose to place perfect acorns in a little angel dish my mom has in her garden. What sentience brought this little act about? Certainly it wasn’t random! There is a sweetness in our animals, both wild and tame. God put it there.
Our gray and red squirrels are so busy. I see them burying acorns all over the place. Deer will feast on the acorns that carpet the ground under my many, many oak trees.
Oak wilt has visited our area, but God has preserved most of ours. Something has pestered the old fashioned lilacs nearby, and they are looking terrible, blooming again in September, which is just wrong. The feeble blossoms are fragrant, blessing the bees, I guess.
I have a dread that these bushes may be beyond recovery.
Everything changes. Death comes to all things on this fallen planet.
That is why I focus on our blessed hope, the glorious appearing.
Too many people do not understand the timeline of what is to come, the whole picture of God’s feasts and His promise to redeem His creation.
There are covenants He made with us, with the animals, with Abraham, with Israel. Too few people understand these monumental promises.
Those of us who seek to know them can see that they are still in play, slowly (to us) unwinding and coming to fruition.
There has never been a time more exciting to live, looking up, waiting and watching for our Lord to come for us.
I understand that death and destruction are also a part of the prophecies.
I choose to put my hope and joy in anticipating God’s great restoration of Heaven and Earth—as He promised. He will make all things new.
Those who believe in Him, in Jesus, have that promise, that covenant to live in hope, not fear.
No fear.
MARANATHA!