Farewell to Winter

Two days ago an 8 inch blanket of snow hugged the ground and clung to every twig.  Now the evening air soars to 52 degrees and drives away the last rags of winter's splendor. A tide all crimson and peach and slate and sapphire glows and fades away from the sinking sun.  The birds are singing their welcome song thrillingly, wildly, ardently and whistling to the velvet night in the key of spring. There are drops (drops!) pattering on the softening sod, running down the eaves and tapping the gutters in a mellow sweet rain while distant thunder murmurs and nearer grumbles like the voice of an old friend we have waited to hear a long while.  In spring God makes the world new.

"What did Spring-time whisper?
O, ye rivulets, waking from your trance so sad,
Pleased to welcome fisher-lad
With his little nets,
Speed, for summer's in the air,
Prattle for the breeze is warm,
Chatter by the otter's lair,
Bubble past the ivied farm;
Wake the primrose on the banks
Bid the violet ope' her eyes
Hurry in a flood of thanks underneath serener skies!
What a revel's coming soon..."
~ Norman Gale

The Joy-Cup

We are commanded in scripture to fear God…to know that God works all things after the counsel of His own will...giving us love and desire for what He loves and joy in whatever He sends...or does not send; and then preparing a table of abundance in the wilderness where there was nothing.

All the "if's" and “why’s” in the lives of men are guaranteed and certain in their final results in the mind of God. Knowing this is the obedience of the heart to the will of the Spirit. It is our right worship of almighty God, the understanding that makes us whole and the faith that is none of our own making. Summer or winter, working or resting, alone or befriended, wealthy or wanting, nothing can satisfy apart from Him.

So we pray that “If the allure of anything, however "good", draws me from Him, let it be struck from me, so that even the pain of pruning draws me to Him.  So let everything about me die...the loves and hates, the body and will...only let Him be my shield and my eternal great reward.”

This is the eternal rest of salvation, the storehouse in which all meaning is garnered.

This is the joy-cup He makes to overflow.

The Peony

Kissed of the sun and damp with dew

Gauzy robes and lustrous hue

I met her...

Her blushing laughing gauzy face 

Toward heaven’s dawn drew mine apace

Breathed glory 

Glory glory a happy fragrant song.

And they danced, the exuberant throng,

In worship,

With Her sisters bent in the breeze together.

So gracious yet fleeting; while we forever

Blessed bend

In reverence and sing before a worthy Master

Who clothes us both, our heavenly Father

And Creator.

While she blooms bright and fades in time

We, in His luminous robes, kiss the Son sublime;

Bloom brighter

And look to a fuller light - His everlasting day.

~EKL

Spring - God Visits the Earth

The lowering mottled gray of the sky broke at sunset last night and glory
spilled over the sullen landscape while the evening breeze, laden with the
scent of a late spring thunderstorm, swept the tree-tops with his sultry
breath.  The sky rained in purply gold and every drop was a living jewel,
every sundry puddle a limpid mirror that cast back the flame of the western
sun and every stretch of road was a paved highway of burnished gold.

Everything is green now... that deep livid green of summer.  The fields and
woods and hills are overflowing with it.  The world is all emeralds and
vermilions and deep olives and iridescent viridians and verdant glowing
yellow-green.  We dig and plant and till and weed, but there is only One who
can "make it come alive."

Psalm 65
Praise is due to you, O God, in Zion,
and to you shall vows be performed.
O you who hear prayer,
to you shall all flesh come.
When iniquities prevail against me,
you atone for our transgressions.
Blessed is the one you choose and bring near,
to dwell in your courts!
We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house,
the holiness of your temple!
By awesome deeds you answer us with righteousness,
O God of our salvation,
the hope of all the ends of the earth
and of the farthest seas;
the one who by his strength established the mountains,
being girded with might;
who stills the roaring of the seas,
the roaring of their waves,
the tumult of the peoples,
so that those who dwell at the ends of the earth are in awe at your signs.
You make the going out of the morning and the evening to shout for joy.
You visit the earth and water it;
you greatly enrich it;
the river of God is full of water;
you provide their grain,
for so you have prepared it.
You water its furrows abundantly,
settling its ridges,
softening it with showers,
and blessing its growth.
You crown the year with your bounty;
your wagon tracks overflow with abundance.
The pastures of the wilderness overflow,
the hills gird themselves with joy,
the meadows clothe themselves with flocks,
the valleys deck themselves with grain,
they shout and sing together for joy.

Be Still - The Sabbath of Fellowship

There is a kind of communication in fellowship that holds a special power...it is silence.

Silence is always full of something...it is another language without words.  The pause of contentment in conversation at the end of a good meal, the weighty silence of sorrow in pain and grief, the companionable stillness while surveying with awe some glorious view in creation or the quietness charged with joy in moments of glad communion are things that cannot be replaced with mere words.

We are, in fact, enjoined to silence before our God.  Psalm 46 says “Be still, and know that I am God...” This is not a suggestion or a request.  It is an imperative command...a required service of worship to God by His people.  It follows an admonishment to consider the works the Lord has done; to survey with Him together the pleasure He has made for Himself through commanding all things after the perfect order of His will.  He finishes the command with a declaration of His right to exact such service from men: “I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!” -Psalm 46:10

Consider: Sunday is a reminder to us to rest and rejoice in the God of our salvation for the wonderful work He has done for us through His Son, Jesus Christ.  He tells us as a Father that it was made to be holy because He rested on the seventh day after speaking the world into being.  We as His children should not always be disappointed in the silence with which our Maker sometimes answers our prayers.  We should rather see it as a special gift of fellowship with the Creator of the universe...a sabbath rest in the accomplishment of His work for us when the glory of His sovereignty is most eloquent.  In times of "silence" we are pressed to rest in His sovereign will and commune with Him by confiding quietly in the promises He has abundantly provided.  It is here in the ceasing of our strivings that the Possessor of all wisdom and knowledge shows us how one Word is yet enough to provide for our every need.

The Christian need not and must not always strive within himself.  We, the children of God should rejoice that He cares for us so much as to desire communion with us in stillness and obey.

"Through a glass, darkly..."

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
1Corinthians 13:12

The verse has troubled me for some time.  Or rather, I should say, its common use in contrast to its true import has troubled me.

Culturally, among Christians, it is quoted often with the ennui of a common truism and dressed up with the sparkle of interest and a butterfly that identifies references as “inspirational” and worthy of featuring on a Hallmark Card.  Read sonorously at uncountable weddings, it becomes the part of tradition which we hear without hearing...at once bereft of any but superficial meaning and tied up with the perfunctory bow of an enigmatical concept called love.

In any case, one gets the vague impression that being really known would be uncomfortable, so this verse must be referring to that best-buddy kind of knowing that makes you feel “understood” without baring more than a few select extracts from the heart censored for security of pride.  After all, if someone really knew us what room could there be for love?  There we often let the verse lie.

.....

I remember vividly the day I understood.  For perhaps the first time, I was consciously remembering and it frightened me.  A circumstance, itself inconsequential, settled a new yoke of responsibility on my seven or eight-year-old self and because I could recall a time when I was free of it, I was unaccountably terrified of going any further in my short lisp of a life.

Every child comes to this time...where childishness becomes conscious, even while it has yet to become maturity.  A mother mourns that first loss of the baby lisp, the stumble over a word.  Then others will watch in vain for childish communication with all its frank, winsome naiveté and haphazard rambling.  The three year old hardly knows what he means when he presents his three chubby digits for your smiling inspection, and no one grudges him the privilege of ignorance on that score.  Soon enough the five year old will be proud to tell you how big he has grown and you will almost unaccountably miss the unpretentious baby in the self-conscious boy.

To our dying day, every one of us has the same insatiable desire to understand, and a dread of what will happen when we do.  The thought of knowing brings with it the shrinking of our childhood from the brink of understanding because we only know in part.  Our human heart, peering through the grand score of God's Word as an amateur musician, struggles to trace out the infinite scope of power and complexity with finite eyes seared by the burning glory of it.  The indwelling Spirit leans over our shoulder and points out the feeble lines of our own parts with surety and love, humming the music until it fills our being with its beauty.  Shut the score, though, and the thought of remembering your part in the symphony with all its intense import and and excellence can cause any one of us to throw aside our sheets of music in despair.  

This is the knowing in part.  But partial knowing carries a heavy responsibility.  The reflection in the glass, dim though it may be, was never meant to be a high thought set aside for moments of euphoric reflection on the swing at sunset.  Jarring as the thought may be, far from moving us to apathy and futility, 1 Corinthians 13:12 is an imperative call to maturity.  The Father did not give us the promise in His Word and send us His Spirit to bear witness to the fulfillment of His promises so that we could languish in the waiting.

 For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer,

he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass:

For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.

James 1:23-24

To be in the midst of assembled believers and shudder over the raw grating dissonance and muddiness of the collected notes is to look in the glass and see the shadow of our natural face with all of its flaws and scars.  What natural man wouldn't wish to forget that natural face?  How easy it is to say then, “I saw the music once, and that is enough.  It is in my heart, and this is all that matters.”  How great a travesty is the secret of the eternal song carried about as a shadow in the depths of Christian souls and never learned or played simply because we all knew that in this life we could never perfect it.

The truth is, we are so concerned with the natural face peering out of the glass at us, that we forget the glass itself.   If we are honest, our sin, when held up to the light, fascinates us; not always, we can flatter ourselves, with the hardened inclinations of a dead conscience, but with the secret pride that says, "Mine is truly ugly."  The rehearsal is full of discordant sounds, and the first one to look up from the jungle of notes before him and say, "I can't possibly do this, it is too horribly difficult," has essayed to raise his "I" to a higher level than the symphony.  There is a great measure of pride in the one who indulges in self-deprecation by believing the music must stop because he has deemed his part to be beyond help or recall.

“For as the rain comes down and the snow from heaven, and do not return there, but water the earth, and make it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater,

"So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it."

Isaiah 55:11

The perfect law of liberty was not composed for our especial benefit.  The divine artist writes to His own pleasure and glory, and His work does not exist merely so we can enjoy its sublime beauty on the mirror in our closet.  It is not the kind of symphony that can be made futile merely because we prefer not to participate, or play our part in secret so that no one may observe the wavering our touch makes in the reflection.

Any student of music can tell you that it does no good to dabble in music with self-fulfillment in mind.  There is no place for neutrality or, ultimately, the expressing of your own will.  In the same way, you must rest in the assurance that you can only begin to know your life-part because you are already fully known by Him.  Your heart must so submit to the hand of the master that you no longer know your hand to be pulling the bow, but you are at once certain of His hand pulling yours.  The beating of your own time must cease to wander stumbling off the steady rhythm of His music and instead be bound to it by His sure hand. 

This is to look into His perfect law of liberty, to see the reflection of true freedom in very submission and to continue in it.  

The compelling reality about the music of the perfect law of liberty is that one must not only hear, but listen... and not forget, but play.  

The overpowering weight of the score, after all, does not rest in our hands, nor even is the completion of our part given into our keeping. 

The secret to playing a symphony is to simply play the notes before us in obedience and 

trust the author to make the symphony.

In the waiting for completion we cry out with Paul:

“O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”

A girl of especially stormy passions and vivid imagination, I cried the day I knew what I could never forget again.  I told my mother with an almost pettish desperation that I wanted to go back to being a little girl.

My dear mother...from my earliest memories the sensible, sympathetic constant that anchored my tempestuous emotions.  I will never cease to be grateful that she was usually undaunted by the wild outbursts of joy or sorrow that rocked my self-aware little world.  That day my tears brought a quiet smile to her face, not unlike the smile I imagine God harbors over our knowledge-bereft wailings.  Before she said a word, I knew she understood, and then she spoke comfort that I didn’t entirely understand, but accepted with the faith that children have in good mothers.  “When you have grown up, you will be glad that you were never able to go back.  You will learn to love growing older.”  And of course she was right.

To this day she still reminds me early and late of the words another wise woman, Elizabeth Elliot drew from this poem, “Do The Next Thing:”

"At an old English parsonage down by the sea,
there came in the twilight a message to me.
Its quaint Saxon legend deeply engraven
that, as it seems to me, teaching from heaven.
And all through the hours the quiet words ring,
like a low inspiration, 'Do the next thing.'

Many a questioning, many a fear,
many a doubt hath its quieting here.
Moment by moment, let down from heaven,
time, opportunity, guidance are given.
Fear not tomorrow, child of the King,
trust that with Jesus, do the next thing.

Do it immediately, do it with prayer,
do it reliantly, casting all care.
Do it with reverence, tracing His hand,
who placed it before thee with earnest command.
Stayed on omnipotence, safe 'neath His wing,
leave all resultings, do the next thing.

Looking to Jesus, ever serener,
working or suffering be thy demeanor,
in His dear presence, the rest of His calm,
the light of His countenance, be thy psalm.
Do the next thing.

The little girl in me no longer casts longing glances over her shoulder.  There can be no mourning for imperfections done away when every look into the mirror is a brush with the perfection that we long for.

But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.

1 Corinthians 13:10

The time darkened glass, serene and expansive, unerringly casts back shadows of the light from timelessness.  The fading of it as it shifts away from a touch awakens the painful longing for it to be still it forever.  Here stands the briefest sliver of time, yet this space, thin enough to shatter at a brush from eternity, stands yet adamant before the mortal, an impenetrable testimony to a sure fulfillment...fulfillment that will engage the whole being un-impaired by sin.  At last to know as we are known, to truly commune with God, face to face.  What joy it will be to no longer reach out over the deep waters of His glory and see the muddying of our sin-tainted hearts obscuring them.  So into this glass, “this substance of things hoped for and evidence of things not seen,” we look again and again.

"But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty,and continueth therein,

he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work,

this man shall be blessed in his deed.

James 1:25

"See, everything has become new..."

Yesterday, as I was carrying water for the greenhouse, I caught a glimpse of purple near the edge of our garden. There can only be one purple flower blooming so early! Violets and Bloodroot are the first flowers to bloom on our farm and herald the appearance of all things green and growing. I went exploring through the woods and gardens and photographed the treasures I found! Spring (especially in northern climes with deciduous trees! :o) ) is such a close picture of God's work of sanctification in the hearts of those He has redeemed. His mercies are new every morning; He molds our heart to more and more love what He loves and hate what He hates; He draws us to repentance and death to our natural self. Last year's growth becomes nourishment for this year's fruit. He calls us to life in His blessed law through the sanctifying work of His Word and the cleansing rain of His Holy Spirit working in us conviction of sin and the fruit of righteousness. All of creation is witness, vociferously praising His marvelous grace; day after day is filled with another reminder of His holiness and goodness and perfection. As our pastor said on Sunday, "The birds get the am. shift!" How true! They sing for they cannot be silent!

“The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing.” Is 35:1

 

Ranks of hosta

  “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse,”  Romans 1:20

Clematis all ready to bloom... a bit early for Minnesota!

 “The works of the Lord are great, studied by all who have pleasure in them.” Psalm 111:2

"I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows..."

Shakespeare

“But now ask the beasts, and they will teach you; and the birds of the air, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you; And the fish of the sea will explain to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this, in whose hand is the life of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind?” Job 12:7-10

Columbine or Honey Suckle

“You visit the earth and water it, You greatly enrich it; the river of God is full of water; You provide their grain, for so You have prepared it. You water its ridges abundantly, You settle its furrows; You make it soft with showers, You bless its growth...."

Unfurling Fern Fronds

"...You crown the year with Your goodness, and Your paths drip with abundance. They drop on the pastures of the wilderness, and the little hills rejoice on every side.  The pastures are clothed with flocks; the valleys also are covered with grain; they shout for joy, they also sing.” Psalm 65:9-13

Otherwise known as a "fiddlehead"... looks just like it too!

 “And God said, ‘Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.’ And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.” Genesis 1:11-12

Tulips considering the pros and cons of early blooming...

“And God said, ‘See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food.’” Genesis 1:29

Bloodroot, also called Tetterwort... the only species in genus Sanguinaria.

"Fear not, O land; Be glad and rejoice, For the Lord has done marvelous things!..."

It would have come up through the snow if there had been any snow to come up through!

  "...Be not afraid, ye beasts of the field: for the pastures of the wilderness do spring, for the tree beareth her fruit, the fig tree and the vine do yield their strength...."

A violet by a mossy stone
     Half-hidden from the eye!-
Fair as a star, when only one
     Is shining in the sky.

Wordsworth

"...Be glad, O children of Zion, and rejoice in the Lord your God, for he has given the early rain for your vindication; he has poured down for you abundant rain, the early and the latter rain, as before."  Joel 2:21-24

“Then God Said, ‘Let there be…and there was…’”

"Every season runs into the last, blotting over the faint shades of its forbear that yet linger in the earth. Yet even in the midst of winter, one can put one’s face close to a patriarchal oak and trace the delicate strokes of fresh living green that last year’s moss painted into the gray bark before frost nipped off the bloom of summer and covered the bareness of autumn with a glittering veil. The flashing, regal splendor of winter, it’s pure lines and austere bearing, dissolve dying into the dead ground, fade into the canvas of latent earth, and thus feed a birth. The infantile mouth of spring opens wide and drinks in the wells preserved so long for its hungry advent. Silent waters break out in a reformation and wash away the frigid barriers in a thrill brimming with promise.

Laud another season if you dare, but in Spring the world is made all over again.

The Six Arrows took our annual adventure to the river again. I was reminded of the quote below for that reason.

“… And in that silence Edmund could at last listen to the other noise properly. A strange, sweet rustling, chattering noise - and yet not so strange, for he’d heard it before - if only he could remember where! Then all at once he did remember. It was the noise of running water. All round them though out of sight, there were streams, chattering, murmuring, bubbling, splashing and even (in the distance) roaring. And his heart gave a great leap (though he hardly new why) when he realized that the frost was over. And much nearer there was a drip-drip-drip from the branches of all the trees. And then, as he looked at one tree he saw a great load of snow slide off it…”
~ C. S. Lewis, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe

All winter long, we are not even reminded that we have forgotten the sound of running water. We forget to miss it until it breaks its bonds in the warm hearty breath of Spring. Water chortling is Spring laughing in the face of the frost. If you live near enough to hear it, the sound calls you out to come and exult with it. Perhaps we are all far too old to “play,” but that doesn’t prevent us from exploring every inch of the water-ways within half a mile of our house every snow-melt.

Of course there is little spice to adventures such as ours unless someone “goes in.” This year both Charlie and Yours Truly fell in “the drink.” Since we never get anything worse than a good dipping and a boot full of water, nobody minds more than to have a good laugh. Laughing is about the only thing you can do when you are breathing air that smells and feels electric with life. We found a pair of beautiful little ruddy gray water rats in a temporary brook. The way they caper around and navigate the water with their little paws and tails is comical. They just quiver with excitement to their very whiskers. The birds are ecstatic and warble for the mere delight of singing...the higher, brighter and more trilling, the better.

“He thought his happiness was complete when, as he meandered aimlessly along, suddenly he stood by the edge of a full-fed river. Never in his life had he seen a river before – this sleek, sinuous, full-bodied animal, chasing and chuckling, gripping things with a gurgle and leaving them with a laugh, to fling itself on fresh playmates that shook themselves free, and were caught and held again. All was a-shake and a-shiver – glints and gleams and sparkles, rustle and swirl, chatter and bubble. The Mole was bewitched, entranced, fascinated. By the side of the river he trotted as one trots, when very small, by the side of a man who holds one spellbound by exciting stories; and when tired at last, he sat on the bank, while the river still chattered on to him, a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea.”


~ Kenneth Grahame - The Wind in the Willows