Still Saturday::to invite mystery...

What does beauty show us? To C. S. Lewis, beauty pointed to another place. "The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust them," writes Lewis, "it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing." 

Our poetry and photographs, our music and films, stir us with a beauty we struggle to communicate— mystery. "They are not the thing itself, ' Lewis continues. "They are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”  

By pursuing the beautiful in life, we invite mystery. God makes himself known in all creation, and yet the more time I spend planting flowers with my daughters, for example, the more I find his character revealed; not only in the visual beauty of the flowers themselves, but in how they bring me and the girls together and the life principles we learn from planting and growing. We discover the mystery of life and trace it to a God who cares enough about his children to reveal himself in the glory of pansies and black-eyed Susans.  

Willard, Timothy (2014-10-14). Longing for More: Daily Reflections on Finding God in the Rhythms of Life (p. 113). Baker Publishing Group. 

Still Saturday::the "divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic"...

I shall open my eyes and ears. Once every day I shall simply stare at a tree, a flower, a cloud, or a person. I shall not then be concerned at all to ask what they are but simply be glad that they are. I shall joyfully allow them the mystery of what Lewis calls their "divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic" existence.

Dr. Clyde Kilby {from John Piper's "10 Resolutions for Mental Health"}

Where all beauty comes from...

“The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing…to find the place where all the beauty came from.” ~ C.S. Lewis

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 

And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.

I think of Genesis as I wander about Pollywog Creek these stifling, humid mornings of summer.

The air is heavy, and I'm weighed down by sweat-drenched clothes and dew-soaked sneakers, and I swat at skeeters that nibble my ankles, and sometimes question my sanity as I tip-toe 'round the pond.

I can hear my neighbors now - peeking through the curtains and watching me from a distance. Silly lady with her camera. Whatever does she see out there in the wet grass and tangle of vines along the creek?  

But truthfully, I can't resist. God sprinkled beauty in unlikely places - in mud and grass and on rocks and cypress knees - and I don't want to miss a thing.

It's in the way dangling moss sparkles in the early morning light, and bullfrogs skip across the surface of the pond, and dragonflies with their gossamer wings poise along the barb-wire fence.

It's in mockingbird serenades, and woodpecker fledglings, and perky dandelions dotting the fields.

And I wonder why we call them weeds when God called them good.

(Post from the archives with photos from a very green and dew-sparkled morning earlier this week.)