L'Abri Journals...ACGray

September 2003
Home | October 2008 | Muggeridge | Christmas 2005 | November 2005 | October 2005 | Sept 2005 | August 2005 | JULY 2005 | June 2005 | May 2005 | April 2005 | March 2005 | February 2005 | January 2005 | Dec 2004 | Nov 2004 | Oct 2004 | Sept 2004 | August 2004 | July 2004 | Summer Again! | May 2004 | April 2004 | Time for Kites | February 2004 | January 2004 | December 2003 | November 2003 | October, 2003 | September 2003 | August 2003 | July 2003 | June 2003 | May 2003 | April, 2003 | Late Winter 2003 | February 2003 | Freighter Travel | January 2003 | December 2002 | November 2002 | October 2002 | September 2002 | August 2002 | July 4, 2002 | June 2002 | May 2002 | April 2002 | March 2002 | February 2002 | January 2002 | December 2001 | November 2001 | October 2001 | September 2001 | August 2001 | July 2001

Summer Matures to Autumn

In a properly ordered world we should all go out onto the hills on such days and know that life is innately good.  Enough, perhaps, that we take time to see and feel and sense the fundamental strength and continuing hospitality of the natural world around us..We find meaning in it that accommodate the best of our beliefs.  So we stand in the open, on such a clean, clear September day, and see the bold horizons of our faith, the hills of our strength, the granite substance of our enduring purpose.   

                                      Hal Borland, This Hill, This Valley. 

 

Chalet LAbri, September 1, 2003...acg

September arrives once more as summer matures into autumn.  The substance of meaning, which nature proclaims in change and flow, is everywhere we turn and engage our senses.  Life risen from seed and bulbs to bud, blossom, and pod, scattered for next seasons resurrection, is all about us.  The other day on the golf course I mistook a large fluff of milkweed seeds for a golf ball that was blown from some great distance to the fairway.  Each gust of wind now brings a shower of a few pinecones from the giant trees fronting the chalet.  The petals of black-eyed susans and Echinacea that have glorified my garden for three months are quickly falling away, leaving brown pods, the silent memory of bees and butterflies, the potency of pollen, readiness of the egg, and their fertile union.  Somewhere therein I perceive the big breakthrough: space ,time, and life in endless cycles, the universe synchronized in perfect harmony since time began, a Supreme Genius with His hands on the strings of interplanetary messengersblessed assurance.life everlasting! 

As if the enduring cycles of all I may observe from my miniscule speck on earth were not enough, these days a close encounter with Mars makes unfathomable my perception of the cosmos.  Astronomers estimate that the Red Planet has not been this near Earth for 60,000 years.  Astrophysicists with their high powered telescopes and sophisticated computers measuring vast distances and extreme temperatures have yet to define the boundaries of the observable universe, let alone the approximate 50 billion visible and estimated trillion invisible galaxies beyond our own, each of which pop off a supernova, the light reaching Earth a century later.  They do know that our nearest galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, radiates 500 million times the energy of the sun.  According to Bob Berman, author of Cosmic Adventure and Secrets of the Night Sky, Oriental records for the year 1006 tell us that a temporary object (star?) shone some 100 times more brilliantly than the Evening Star and cast distinct shadows on the countryside.  Could such an object have orbited near the earth and like Mars in 2003, explain the star the wise men followed to Bethlehem when Christ was born?   Life out there in other galaxies?.Possibly.  Not how much but how little we know!  Just now, let me be satisfied with the glory of September woodlands and ripeness and a falling leaf...

                                                      

The answer to the question of God has profound implications for our lives here on earth.So we owe it to ourselves to look at the evidence, perhaps beginning with the Old and New Testaments.  (C. S.) Lewis reminds us that the evidence lies all around us:  We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God.  The world is crowded with Him.  He walks everywhere incognito.  And the incognito is not always easy to penetrate.  The real labor is to remember to attend.  In fact to come awake.  Still more to remain awake.              

From The Question of God  by Armand M. Nicholi, Jr

Therefore we do not lose heart.  Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.  For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.  For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
                                                         II Corinthians 2:16-18   NIV