“We are not orphans in the world.  We are not the random products of time and matter and chance.  We are fashioned by God.  He is our Holy Father.

             Ravi Zacharias, Invested Dignity, Reflected Glory.

 

“And God saw every thing that He had made, and, behold, it was very good. Genesis 1:31

Very soon now beginning 10 October if the sky is clear a full moon will dazzle our Shenandoah Valley and invade my chalet with shimmering light.  A soft mystical benediction will gentle these premises with memories of other Octobers where the wonders of Creation I have seen with my own eyes capture my thoughts.  I stood on the roof of the Fountainbleu hotel in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania one dazzling moonlit night in 1987 and watched lights blinking on ships and tiny fishing boats moving in the harbor.  In Sanaa, Yemen, I beheld a night sky brilliant with a pulsing Milky Way and picked out Cassiopoeia and the Big Dipper.  Guide books informed me that Adam, Seth and Enoch were the first astronomers.   Centuries later men believed the Maji set off from Yemen in search of the new born Messiah.   Aboard the freighter Cho Yang Atlas on a star spangled night in the Gulf of Aden I marveled at the immense majestic canopy of heaven and recalled the Psalmist words: “the heavens declare the glory of God.” In Kenya’s Great Rift Valley I saw the horizon turn pink with flamingos in flight and snow-capped Mt. Kilimanjaro suddenly appear after a passing rainstorm. When leaving Tokyo aboard the USS President Cleveland in 1969, I watched the sun set in a blaze of glory over fabled Mt. Fuji.  How could I ever believe all that I have seen and known to be real in my heart just happened impossibly by chance?  “Earth's crammed with heaven, wrote Elizabeth Barrett Browning in penetrating verse, “And every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees, takes off his shoes. The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries, And daub their natural faces unaware.” 

 

The best things in life are nearest.
Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life's plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life. –

          Robert Louis Stevenson

  

“I pray that from His glorious, unlimited resources He will empower you with inner strength through His Spirit.  Then Christ will make His home in your hearts as you trust in Him.  Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong.  And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep His love is.  May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully.  Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.    Paul in his letter to the Ephesians.  Ephesians 3:14-19, New Living Translation