Having a childlike faith in a grown-up world: Playdates with God...

What if...what if Jesus gave us the image of children because they are so utterly dependent on their parents....one thing they did very well: opening the empty hand. Children are excellent receivers. ~ Laura Boggess, Playdates With God: Having a Childlike Faith in a Grown-Up World, p. 67

I hungrily devour each chapter in Laura Boggess' newly released Playdates With God: Having a Childlike Faith in a Grown-Up World, and then savor and digest each morsel of truth her words open like a gift. Laura articulates and validates what I've been experiencing since I serendipitously captured the beauty of a tassel flower and began cultivating an eye for life's mercies with a camera years ago.  

Laura gives a name to my photographic wanderings -- Playdates with God. She uncovers my deepest longings -- the needs I have, like that of a child, for love, intimacy and dependency on my Father -- that draw me to this practice where I ask Him to open my eyes to glimpses of His beauty, His character, and His gifts that I might capture them for my joy and His glory.  

In Playdates With God, Laura helps me realize the importance of being intentional to make this practice -- like Sabbath -- a scheduled event on the calendar each week -- a day and time where with open hands I'm ready to receive like a child what the Father freely gives. 

With support from Scripture, as well as resources in art, literature, science, and theology, Laura uses multiple images of play -- trampolines, swings, super-soakers, hide and seek, etc. -- to share her journey to recover a child-like faith through her own playdates with God in the midst of her adult responsibilities as wife, mother, author, poet and clinical psychologist.

To chase the God-bliss, do I dare step outside my preconceived notions of what a mature spiritual life looks like? Do I shed some of the self-imposed rules I subscribe to -- not worry about what others might think? ~ Laura Boggess, Playdates With God: Having a Childlike Faith in a Grown-Up World, p. 34

Playdates With God is a beautiful book I will long treasure. 

You can connect with the lovely Laura through her blog, facebook, instagram or twitter.

Thank you, Laura and Leafwood Publishers, for my complimentary copy of Playdates With God in return for my honest review. 

#PlayDatesWithGod

In the rustling grass...

Florida Butterfly Orchid

Following his Syracuse University education and theological training at Auburn Theological Seminary, Maltbie Babcock became the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Lockport, New York, in 1882.

Damselfly

Maltbie had been an outstanding athlete in college, and he delighted in running and hiking through the beautiful countryside around Lockport during his pastorate there.

Polydamus-swallowtail

As he left for a run or hike, he was known to say, I'm going out to see my Father's world.

Beautyberry

Before Maltbie left Lockport in 1887, to pastor the Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church in Baltimore, Maryland, he wrote a poem with sixteen stanzas - each beginning with the words, This is My Father's World.

Legless glass lizard

Maltbie was just 42 years old when on May 18, 1901, he died of a bacterial infection en-route to the Holy Land - the trip a gift from the Brick Presbyterian Church in New York City where he was the pastor at the time.

Giant Swallowtail

That same year, Maltbie's writings, including the lovely hymn This Is My Father's World, were compiled by his wife and published into a book entitled Thoughts for Everyday Living.

Pileated Woodpecker

School Days

by Maltbie Davenport Babcock

Lord, let me make this rule, 
To think of life as school, And try my best 
To stand each test, 
And do my work, 
And nothing shirk. 
Should someone else outshine 
This dullard head of mine, 
Should I be sad? 
I will be glad. 
To do my best, 
Is Thy behest. 
If weary with my book,
I cast a wistful look 
Where posies grow, 
O let me know 
That flowers within 
Are best to win. 
Dost take my book away 
Anon to let me play, 
And let me out 
To run about? 
I grateful bless 
Thee for recess.

Swallow-tailed Kite

In his article (reprinted from 2005) Nature-Deficit Disorder - Is Your Child at Risk?, Dr. Al Mohler shares this from Richard Louv's book Last Child in the Woods:

Louv tells of interviewing thousands of children in the course of previous research. At one point, he received this candid comment from a fourth-grade boy in San Diego: I like to play indoors better, ’cause that’s where all the electrical outlets are.

Southeastern Five-lined Skink

Mohler concludes with this (emphasis mine):

This is our Father’s world, and we would do well to receive this world and enjoy it, while giving praise and glory to God for the beauty and bounty it contains. We understand that nature is not an end to itself, and we affirm that the creation exists as the theater of God’s glory for the drama of redemption. All this should help Christians to remember that we honor God most faithfully when we receive His good gifts most gratefully. Christians should take the lead in reconnecting with nature and disconnecting from machines.

British Soldier Lichen


Creeping Oxeye with Adult Agapostemon splendens (Lepeletier), a sweat bee
{*All photos from my Pollywog Creek backyard the past two weeks}

To radiate the beauty...

Truly charity has no limit; for the love of God has been poured into our hearts by His Spirit dwelling in each one of us, calling us to a life of devotion and inviting us to bloom in the garden where He has planted and directing us to radiate the beauty and spread the fragrance of His Providence.

St. Francis de Sales

I haven't always cared much for the garden where [I've been] planted. In fact, I downright refused to grow roots here or to see the beauty that radiated from what and who did.

Twenty-five years later, I'm embarrassed to remember that season of ingratitude and rebellion against God's providence and sovereignty. But remember, I must - for like the Israelites, who in the hard desert wandering, forgot the oppression of Egypt, to forget makes it easier to return to a season of discontent.

Like wildflowers that flourish in fields of glory or roadside ditches - the choice is not theirs to make. They cheerfully root and bloom where ever the wind takes them. 

So be it with me, Lord. So be it with me.

Still Saturday::to gather the harvest of the quiet eye...

To have an eye for the wide pictures and slight studies of nature; to gather them up in solitary walks which thus are not lonely; to lay them by, together with the heart's deeper thoughts, its associations, meditations and reminiscences; this is to fashion common things into a beauty which, to the fashioner at least, may be a joy for ever.

The Harvest of the Quiet Eye - Leisure Thoughts for Busy Lives, by John Richard Vernon

:: 

The outward shows of sky and earth
of hill and valley he has viewed;
And impulses of deeper birth
Have come to him in solitude

In common things that round us lie
Some random truths he can impart,
- the harvest of a quiet eye
That broods and sleeps on his own heart.
from A Poet's Epitaph by William Wordsworth

Thank you, Sandy, for giving me the opportunity to host Still Saturday last month, but we've all missed you and we're thrilled that you are back.

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"}

Wordless Wednesday::to the moon and back...

{Photos::God's faithfulness revealed in His creation from the banks of the Caloosahatchee River on a Tuesday at dawn}

What I already know...

I'm greeted by a delightfully cool morning breeze and a chorus of chirps as I slide open the doors to the back porch.

A small grey squirrel munches on feed that's spilled out of the bird feeder and onto the ground, and an adult male cardinal and his brood of fledglings have arrived for breakfast.

As far as I can tell, there are 4 little ones - two on the branches of the scrub oak that shades the dog pen, one on the chain-link fence, and another one in the sweetgum tree over the feeders.

I've always been captivated by the beautiful crimson plumage of the male cardinal and the attention he gives to his mistress - how he tenderly feeds, watches over, chases after, and calls out to his less attractive bride. I've told my grandsons that it's a glimpse of how God expects a man to provide and care for the woman he marries - just like their daddy does for their mommy - and how God wants them to one day love and care for the woman they will one day marry. It's a bit over their little heads, but maybe if I keep telling them, they'll remember when it counts.

This morning, the female cardinal is nowhere to be found and the male gives the fruit of their breeding and nesting his full attention.

Despite their ability to leave the nest, it's obvious the fledglings expect their father to feed them. He calls out to them with sharp, staccato tweets as he carries seed from the feeder to the fence, back to the feeder, to one of the trees, and back to the feeder again and again and again - while the fledglings open their beaks and beg with constant chirps and ruffled feathers until he feeds them.

When Jesus taught His disciples about the Kingdom of God, he often used what they already knew in nature - storms and fig trees, wheat and fish, and sparrows and flowers.

And He teaches me that way, too.

So when I watch the male cardinal's faithful attention to his feathered bride and brood of fledglings, I'm reminded of what I already know - that the LORD loves, feeds, watches, chases after, calls to and cares for me.