Continuity

God in the Yard: Week Three

Most mornings before the children rise, I have been able to be outside in the yard.  Sitting under the Crabapple tree, feeling the acceptance of nature.  I woke up yesterday, shunned the chilly morning and chose the couch.  Book and journal and pen I began.  The crowding started immediately:  stale, gritty, inanimate, lifeless surroundings.  The room did not speak.  Grabbing my sweatshirts, I quickly rejoined the reality that calls.

The moment I opened the door I knew it was the place of God. Surely nature, too, has omnipresence.  The breeze was blowing already.  The leaves were twittering and whispering.  The birds were mid-song.  The green healing from the hail was in process.  The Coreopsis bloomed without me.  I wasn't the one to create it. I just joined it, wanting to be a part of its story. 

God too is always at work whether we're aware, whether we trust, whether we understand or not.  However, days and weeks go by when I do not enter his reality.  Sadly the inanimate rules my mind and heart. It's not a leaving that I have to do, but an entering. Ever present, ever powerful, ever loving, ever purposeful. Whether or not we choose to take notice of him, he is always there being who he is and we can join his story.  

Opening my book I read this from A.W. Tozer.  "Always a living person is present, speaking, pleading, loving, working and manifesting himself whenever and wherever his people have the receptivity necessary to receive the manifestation."  This was my firsthand experience.  Nature was the object lesson.  

Earlier in the week I had contemplated what it is that nature communicates that words cannot.  Perseverance.  The true-grit nature of it.  The never-give-up-doing-what-is-right aspect.  We humans have a stopping point.  We push through a little of the rough, maybe even a hail-like stoning or a wind.  But we give in when we look around and listen to outside voices.  When we think a disaster has won, we let it. Quit. Move.

Nature stays put. And takes the hit and re-creates the beauty over and over.  The tender leaves might wait a year to return from the hail.  The tree takes on a new form and purpose after the fire.  The bird will learn to fly.  The tree will produce seed though so many thousands were left unfurrowed for naught last year.  The bird will sing when none answer.  

To be consistent in my one thing is to take that image of God and push it out of the soil, expose it to all that is nourishing and let it continually be both the inner and outer covering.  God is continuous. Nature follows suit. I want to be like my maker.