Thankful.
I really can’t imagine living anywhere else.
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Thankful.
I really can’t imagine living anywhere else.
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Daily graces
On this day of Thanksgiving, we set aside a day to remember God’s blessings, the bountiful gifts generously given from His hands. That is well and good – Having a day set aside specifically to focus on those things is a good reminder, much like we set aside a day each week for worship of God, while (hopefully) maintaining an attitude of worship throughout the week. Similarly, thanksgiving should be a state of our hearts, not just a day on our calendars. Cultivating an attitude of thanksgiving is a way of speaking God’s truths to ourselves daily, the truths of God’s blessings, the lavish love He pours out on His undeserving children.
In a culture that is increasingly self-focused and, consequently, focused on everything we don’t have, thankfulness and gratitude are graces every Christian should cultivate. How can I blame God for things that go wrong, if I am unshakably focused on thanking Him for the gifts that He gives? How can I be envious of others if I am determined to thank God for what He has given me? How can I not show grace towards others if I am living a life of gratitude for God’s grace towards me? How can I be resentful for my plans that have gone wrong, when I reflect in thanksgiving on the plans of God that are always right?
This attitude of thanksgiving isn’t easy to cultivate, and it is an attitude I fail at repeatedly. But might it not be because my vision of God’s blessings is incomplete? I, and likely all my brothers and sisters in the faith, tend to look for the big things, the big gifts, the miracles, the lightning bolts of God’s goodness, the indisputable signs of God’s providence. When my family gathers around the table for Thanksgiving dinner, we thank God for freedoms, faith, family, church community, the ability to homeschool, spiritual blessings, material blessings, the signs of God’s workings in our lives. Those things are indisputably God’s gifts and our response should be one of gratitude. But what if we have a day, or a year, or a decade, or a lifetime where we feel the weight of our own failure, or the wretchedness of the world, or experience loss, hardship, pain, tragedy? I would submit to you that God never ceases to work in our lives, and never ceases to shower blessings on us – We simply need the eyes to see those gifts. I would also submit to you that God works most often in our lives in small ways, through subtle means, a steady trickle of wonderful gifts, instead of the occasional deluge. Realizing that, there should never be a shortage of things to be thankful for, if we have the eyes to see, the ears to hear, the hearts to understand.
“We pray for the big things and forget to give thanks for the ordinary, small (and yet really not small) gifts,” said Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I hope and pray for signs and unmistakable blessings, but what about the tiny things, the almost-invisible things? What about the small ways God has grown my faith? What about the gift of having any faith at all? Maybe this is why I love to look for beauty, to seek it out, be it as small and mundane as flakes of snow on a dried flowertop, or a drip of snow melt, or the way geese flock overhead in the cold winter sky – those things are reminders of the goodness of God.
I believe in a sovereign God, who orders all things and through whom all things are sustained. I believe that God is sovereign over the big things, like my family moving to South Dakota, and I continue to thank Him for that miracle in my life. But it also means He is sovereign over that cap of snow on the flower top, and the ringing calls of the geese that made me search them out in the clear, cold sky. He is sovereign over me seeing them, and He is sovereign over the joy I felt when I saw them. Those are as much a work of God as the fact that I now live in the place I love best in the world.
While I may not experience another “big miracle” for awhile, God gives the gift of beauty every day: the delicate stem of golden grass, the silver of sage beneath the snow, footprints on the frozen pond, the spark and flame of flakes continuing to fall in the sunlight, a nail driven deep into a snow-capped fencepost, the sound of geese overhead, the trickling tune of snow melt off the roof. And the awareness of that beauty is something that can be cultivated.
Even in the midst of failure, tragedy, fear, even when my faith seems small, I can always look to the sky and see evidence of God’s goodness. I can look to the earth and see the tiny things He has fashioned with His hands. I can look around me and see beauty that God has poured into this world, in the midst of bleakness, sorrow, and pain.
God gives those gifts and the capacity to enjoy them: eyes to see that beauty, ears to hear it, a tongue to taste the sweetness of the winter air, fingers to reach up to catch the snowflakes, lungs to breathe deep of the burning, sparkling cold, cheeks to blush and glow in the chapping breeze.
Although I can and do reflect on the blessings God has given me, the “big miracles,” I never have to look past today to see the blessings He is giving me now, the constant reminders that there is a God in the Heavens who is worthy of my adoration and praise. What a wonderful God to lavish such wonderful blessings. What wonderful blessings to bear witness to such a God.
Poetry | Dusk
Dusk: A Poem
How I love the dreaming dusk,
When drowsy life falls fast asleep.
And into houses, nests, and dens,
All breathing things do creep.
The silence falls like heavy dew
As one by one the stars appear.
The darkness comes with gentle step,
A quiet mother, drawing near.
The silver crescent of the moon
Is tangled in the trees,
While a gentle hushing lullaby
Is murmured in the breeze.
The amber turns to lilac
In a sky of deepening night.
And a gentle rush of wings is heard
From an owl’s silent flight.
In the last light of the day,
That smoky dimness, clear and cold,
The trees stand grave and dark and still,
Like father-kings of old.
The pearly light fades from the sky
And above the far horizon’s rim
Diamond bright a star is seen
Like a candle, flickering dim.
Poetry | Dawn
Dawn: A Poem
I love the earth before the dawn
When sleeping things awake,
When pearly breezes kiss the grass
And birds their lovesongs make.
Before the day has yet awoke –
Those fleeting moments, oh! How few!
Before the golden dawn has broke
And turned the hoary frost to dew,
Then a shimmering spell is cast
And all the world in slumber dreams.
There isn’t heard nor breath nor sigh
|And the moon on mirror waters gleams.
The softest stirring in the trees –
A rosy blush where sky meets earth,
A hidden joy, a waking love,
A welling forth of mirth.
For then! The light of glorious sun!
The east in flaming glory stands
And paints each hill and rock and vale
As if by touch of tender hands.
And at the first light of the dawn
The silver world is bathed in light
Of amber sun and sapphire sky
And all forget the night.
Winter Comes
As lovely as the snow is by day, I find the glimmering whiteness even more enchanting by the light of the moon, when the silver light filters through the bare branches of trees, casting strange and silent shadows on the flawless snow. Instead of blinding brilliance, the ground glints with a cold, unearthly sort of a light. The moonbeams seem to stream from the sky in a transparent flood, and the very air seems richer, almost as if it could be cupped in the hands and tasted.
The cold seems less significant in the moonlight. I don’t know why. But with the cloudless sky winking with stars and the snow winking with diamond-light, the moon streaming silver and the wind hushed about the trees, unmoving and silent, the cold seems reluctant to chill or burn or bother. When I lift up my face to the moonlight, with the snow glowing and reflecting and shimmering, I almost feel that my face could be washed by the light.
Today, though, winter is retreating, temporarily. The earth waits expectantly. Or, perhaps, sleeps in contentment. Either way, the earth is still.
The spell of the first snow, as fragile as a snowflake dissolved by a single, warm breath, has faded in the warmth of the springlike November air, unseasonably mild and sweet. Ice remains on the creeks and lakes, in places where the sun doesn’t reach, holding fast to the sheltered banks, but slowing giving way to the water. Only patches of snow cling to the northern slopes of hills and beneath the branches of trees, like memories of shadows.
For now, winter is still elusive. But she will come.
First Breath of Winter
Something about the snow, a fresh snow, transforms the landscape of my mind. When the snow starts to fly, I can’t seem to stop smiling – my soul can’t stop smiling. There is a newness, a freshness, a wonder about the snow, flying and swirling from an invisible sky above and transforming the drabness of dying autumn into the glory of waking winter. The cold ceases to matter. The snow seems to bathe life with madcap delight.
I came downstairs yesterday morning, before the sun had peeked into our hollow, and I was greeted by the wonder of snow. Everything was covered – the rough-cut fences, the branches of every tree, old tires sitting out by the chicken coop, the wind chimes, windowsills, the yellow grader – everything was covered in a layer of pure, undefiled white.
There outside was Anna’s black kitten, Kashka, enjoying the experience of her first snow. She frolicked and dashed madly about, plunging through snow drifts, jumping up a tree, in the throes of delight. She didn’t even try to sneak into the house, as is her habit. As I drove up our winding driveway to work, a few does startled up from their bedding ground, kicking up their heels – the cold and snow and delight of winter had gotten to them, too. When I got home last night, I couldn’t resist a mad dash around our place – T-shirt, flannel pants, and snow boots, the thermometer reading 15 degrees, and the wind laughing in the trees.
Today, the sun is shining and the sky is the pale blue of winter, behind transparent clouds – The world sparkles in the chill sunlight. Delight and quiet seem to walk hand-in-hand in a world transformed: The chirrup of snow underfoot, the gentle chuckle as snow falls from trees, the icy rustle of a rabbit in the tall grass, the sigh of windblown snow on snow. It is a fragile spell that might shatter like an icicle on stone, shaken loose by a mere sigh of a breeze. But fragile or not, while it lasts the spell is binding.
This is the first breath of winter.
Song Dog Journal 