Summer::July Part 2:beautiful in its time...

[As mentioned in July Part 1, Hurricane Irma has been a major disruption this summer. It's a story for September, but not until I get through July and August in my summer photo series--though I realize that it's technically no longer summer. Looking at the pre-Irma photos of our property is bittersweet. It's hard to see how much was destroyed by the hurricane, but I'm confident that much will also be restored in due time. There will always be beauty--and sometimes it can be found in the most unlikely places.]   

After the beach, the remaining weeks of July showcased our typical mid-summer flare--muscovy ducks gliding across the pond's surface, shimmery-winged dragonflies on barb-wired fences and wildflower blooms. Swallow-tailed kites, pileated woodpeckers, blue jays and mockingbirds...and bushes and bushes and bushes of ripening beautyberries. 

And those air potato vines. I'm well aware that they are an unwelcomed invasive species, but how do I not love those shiny heart-shaped leaves in the thickets along the creek before the air potato beetles do their work. 

Virginia creeper climbs the tall pines, and primrose willow dots the open field and pasture. Resurrection fern, unfurling from its dried spiral with every summer rain, drapes the live oak limbs, as 3 armadillo pups root in the ground underneath. 

And when the goldenrod shoots begin to grow--I'm delighted to remember that there will be not-summer days.    

He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.

~Ecclesiastes 3:11 

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

~Isaiah 40:8 

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}

When beauty seems like a slap in the face...

How sunlight pierced the cloudless cerulean sky and mockingbirds serenaded from sweetgum trees bursting with new growth and wildflowers danced in the breeze on carpets of green while butterflies drank in the bloom's sweet nectar.

I remember like it was yesterday - that afternoon in April twelve years ago today that was my momma's time to die.

The beauty of spring  - it seemed like a slap in the face. 

I stood outside the room, where I'd bathed and washed and fed my beautiful momma the last year and a half of her life, as morticians moved her lifeless body onto their cold steel gurney - and I was mad. 

Mad that on that day in April, the sun would dare to shine and grass grow thick and green and birds would serenade praise from the top of flourishing trees and butterflies could drink in the goodness of blooms dancing wild and free and alive.   

So in the middle of this week in April, I sit in the pasture chasing butterflies through the lens of my camera and imagine how maddening my delight would be for those whose lives have exploded by the unspeakable, and how could I dare to share life that goes on and frame beauty around me in pictures.  

The truth is that every day - not just the days evil plants bombs and blasts level communities - someone grieves a life that has blown up and been ripped apart by the sins and injustices of this fallen world.   

Maybe that's one of the reasons we are given artistic gifts - why I'm compelled to push pain and grief for the losses of others aside that I might sit with a camera and soak in and capture glimpses of the goodness of God in a broken and hurting world - to be reminded that a time for singing is coming, and our Redeemer, who endured the most cruel injustice of all, lives and comforts and heals and saves and makes everything beautiful in its time. 

You'll never be a beauty queen...

I'm ten or eleven and I limp down the darkened stairwell. At the bottom of the marble stairs, mama opens the door and exhaust fumes from the street outside fill the hallway, stifling the stench of burned flesh and antiseptics lingering in my nostrils.

Outside we cross the street to McCory's. It's my reward for not crying when the doctor cauterizes the warts on my knee for what seems like the hundredth time. I climb up onto one of the red vinyl-covered stools along the counter, and mama buys us cherry cokes with the two last dimes in her wallet.

Mama examines the burns on my knee and shakes her head. You'll never be a beauty queen she tells me, and don't I know it. Frizzy hair frames my freckled face, drab brown eyes and buck-toothed grin.

She means no harm. She's hoping to make me laugh, but the words stick tight to my tender heart and when I look in the mirror, I see ugly and loser. And I don't remember my daddy ever telling me otherwise.

When you are ten or eleven and believe you're ugly and a loser and no one tells you differently, and you drag those wounding words into grown-up life, it takes a God-sized scalpel to scrape them off your heart, mercy to bathe the wounds in love, and the cross to heal them with grace.   

So when I'm long past ten or eleven and once again limp down the stairs, I begin to understand why I see beauty in the weeds.

He has made everything beautiful in its time....
Ecclesiastes 3:11a ESV

The origin of all things beautiful...

{Jonathan} Edwards encountered the Creator in his creation. Or, to use the language of the apostle Paul, God’s “invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made” (Romans 1:20; cf. also Psalms 19 and 104)

...I’ll never again gaze on a giraffe or a bug or a constellation or a cloud or a valley or a mountain stream or a bird in flight and fail to think of God and marvel at his power and worship him as the “Original” of all things beautiful. ~ Sam Storms The Personal Narrative of Jonathan Edwards - Part III  

HT-Ann Voskamp