It used to be a custom of mine to do a “favorite photos” post at the beginning of a new year, and I’d like to bring that back….This last year was one for the books, and as I look back over my photos from 2023, the first thing that strikes me is how beautiful life is. The second thing that strikes me is how much joy God has brought to my life…my photography tends to flow from that joy, as I try to capture moments of happiness and wonder. The third thing that strikes me is how the color palette changes over the course of a year, with each season having its own colors and textures and flavors, from the gentle, muted tones of the winter, to the emerging greens of springtime combined with the rustic tones of leather and denim during branding, to the rambunctious chaos during our green summertime as the landscape into into a wild array of colors and wildflowers bloom, then settling into the rich, warm tones of autumn, as each little bit of sunlight is reflected in the ripening fruit and golden leaves and the flame-colored jars of canned jams and jellies and whatever else.
How beautiful life is. 2023 was a beautiful year.
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You probably know the song. It happens to be one of my favorite songs, and in another life I enjoyed singing the role of Maria in two different community theatre productions of Sound of Music. There’s a fun fact for the day!
But does it really get much prettier than this?
The roses have burst into bloom over the last week, and I don’t know that I’ve ever photographed them looking more fetching than during this stormy-day walk.
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“The whole world is a series of miracles, but we’re so used to them we call them ordinary things.”
Hans Christian Andersen
Romans 1:20 talks about how God’s divine attributes are clearly perceived in His creation design. If you want to see miracles, just look at the beauty of this earth! Creation just sings that there is a God who created all that we see and loves what He created! Few things convince me of this more than the joy God’s furred and feathered creatures bring to His humans, the deep love that can be shared between a human and an animal and yes, I believe it is reciprocal. I think animals have way more to their minds than we give them credit for, much more capacity for emotion and connection. It goes beyond instinct. And I believe that this intellect and intuition is something that brings glory to the Creator! God didn’t need to create any of what He created, and He sure didn’t need to create a human-animal connection that is so joy-giving. Yet what He created He looked at and “saw that it was good.” Isn’t it amazing that He did what He did? That He has created a world that can bring so much joy and goodness and pleasure? Because He didn’t need to.
The delight and peace I feel with my animals is one of those ordinary joys that really is anything but ordinary.
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And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. (Genesis 2:8-9, 15)And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:28-28)
Of all the occupations that exist, the only broad category that existed prior to the Fall was that of the cultivator, the farmer, the gardener. It was the original work God created for Adam and his wife to do, to be keepers of God’s Garden, stewards of His Creation, keepers of the fields and the trees, the livestock and other animals. They were to carefully and responsibly manage the world that God had made. To take care of it. To tend it. To cultivate it. To nurture it. And even after the Fall, this mandate was to continue to be carried out by everyone, but it is especially seen today in those who live and and work as the cultivators, the growers, the caretakers.
It is National Agriculture Day, and most people will zero in pretty quickly on the farming and ranching side of agriculture, and may have a pretty specific idea that comes to mind without thinking of just how gloriously broad this category is, encompassing or touching so many of our most basic needs! Where does your bread come from? The milk in your fridge? Meat? Eggs? Pet foods? Medicines and herbs? Wood to build homes, or wood to heat? In some way, shape, or form, agriculture is involved.
But this isn’t purely utilitarian. So much of the flavor and beauty of living has at its root in the growing and cultivating of life. Trees and shrubs for landscaping. Cut flowers for bouquets. Succulent fruits, nourishing vegetables. Cotton and linen and wool to make textiles for beautifying our homes, all rely on agriculture. Beauty is cultivated, and the abundance of life is made even more abundant.
In so many cases with farms and ranches and the working of livestock, it is generational work, one in which the oldest generation is teaching the youngest generation, where knowledge and skills and values and morals are being handed down, where the family unit truly is the center of the endeavor. It makes me think of God’s command to His people, all the way back in Deuteronomy, the command to “Honor your father and your mother….that your days may be long, and that it may go well with you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.” (Deuteronomy 5:16) One of the great joys living in the agricultural community is seeing families working with families, spouses working with spouses, and being able to live and experience that myself.
And this life! It is the satisfaction of taking a seed and watching it grow and bringing it to harvest. It is the joy of delivering fresher-than-fresh eggs to a neighbor, or serving a loaf of homemade bread to a friend. It is the heart-warming delight of watching a mother cow get her new calf to stand and nurse. It is the pain of seeing death. The uncertainty of dry dams and wildly fluctuating cattle prices. The trust that God will provide. It is a life of working alongside loved ones, to fellowship and break bread, where family upon family from the broader community come together, where names are known from one part of the state to another, simply by virtue of being a part of this community, the ranching community. It is a life and a livelihood richer and sweeter than I could have imagined before God married me to a rancher and into one of the kindest families I’ve ever met, into one of the strongest communities I’ve ever seen. This life is a constant reminder that all that we have is from God, and He has given us the job of stewarding it well. Taking what is and making the most of it, making it more, making it feed our families, our communities.
It is a life brimming full of life.
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Where Winter meets Spring, there is a quietude, or chaos. Sometimes it is the whirling madness of feet of snow and frigid cold, and a rapid melt that runs off in floods. Other times, it is a gentle meeting, where the air is kind and the sky is kinder, and the moisture comes sweetly as an answer to prayer.
I love the days that follow, like yesterday, when the sun rises on a quiet earth. The clouds break. A bluebird sky domes over the snow-clad world that basks in the chill warmth of the not-quite-spring sun. There isn’t a breath of wind and the only disturbance is the occasional hush of a sound as a snowy burden slips from the boughs of a heavy-laden pine, swirling away with a glossy sheen.
Or other days, like today, when the strange mixture of the warm morning sunlight on a chill and damp world causes fog to roll in waves over the plains, coming to lap against our ridge like waves against a shore . The fog was shallow, not even covering the rural electric lines, and the flat top of Potato Butte to our north was just visible, emerging from a sea of white. Blue was overhead, and in the expanse of blue was a north-bound skein of geese, and then another, in the telltale flight of springtime.
And how easy it is to forget God’s faithfulness, His provision, and that He truly does hear our prayers. There are bad years and there are good years, and both come from the hand of a loving and kind God. We can get so wrapped up in counting hundredths of an inch of rain, or willing those clouds to drop their moisture for us, praying for snow then praying that it hold off, all the while forgetting that those 15 hundredths of an inch of rain, that dusting of snow, that foot of snow, all came from the hand of God and wouldn’t have fallen otherwise.
There are so many passages in Scripture that remind us of what we already know, that it is God Who changes the seasons, God Who brings the rain, God Who sends the snow and feeds His creatures. I love these verses from Psalm 104.
You make springs gush forth in the valleys; they flow between the hills; From your lofty abode you water the mountains; the earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work.
You cause the grass to grow for the livestock and plants for man to cultivate, that he may bring forth food from the earth.
O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom have you made them all.(Ps. 104:10, 13, 14, 24)
But we are so quick to forget! Quick to receive and slow to give thanks! But this beautiful collision of winter and spring can be a reminder…It is to me. A reminder that it is God Who changes the seasons, and it is because of His sovereignty and His wonderful creative design of this world that “all things hold together.” (Col. 1:17) He has sustained and He will continue to sustain.
“While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.” (Gen. 8:22)
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