After 47 years on this earth, I find that nature still has plenty of surprises up her sleeve. One need not even travel far. The trip from Austin to Elgin was enough to offer a feast of beauty I had never witnessed.
This fall we had several heavy dews. Dews which left big drops of water on the fields of hay. Some of these heavy dews coincided with bright blue skies and full sun. If you looked away from the sun, you saw green, wet grass. But if you looked into the sun, the light exploded through millions of prisms, much larger than ice crystals, blinding you with brilliant white light. It was one of the most breathtaking sights I have ever seen, all in my front yard. The picture above does not come close to doing it justice because light is living and active, and at such an intensity, even painful to behold.
These dazzling dews fell the week of the terrorist attack in Ankara. And the week of the massacre in Paris.
How is it, I wonder, that God continues to bless the world with such beauty while it is so heavy laden with pain and guilt?
Of course, the dew does not fall everywhere. Sometimes the ground is too hard, or the eye too weary to be comforted.
How does one store up beauty, or treasure hope, for those too grieved to receive it? Can we make deposits of joy in our children sufficient to sustain their hope when sorrow strikes, for it will surely stalk them all the days of their lives.
The Holy Spirit still hovers over the waters, the chaos, of this planet. If it were not so, all would be lost. Creation still nurtures, comforts, surprises us with beauty and joy. And yet, new as I am to this marvel, I cannot help but feel the world is old and weary. I want to see it as it was in the beginning - or better yet, the way it will be.
I find myself remembering C.S. Lewis' Great Divorce, believing that such a great cosmic split of good and evil, heaven and hell, is what I long for - knowing at the same time, that such a divorce would be more painful than I imagine.
Even so, Lord Jesus, come!