I was shocked the other morning, Margaret and I taking our terrier for her early morning walk, to notice a large maple tree half-turned a glorious red-orange, looking for all the world almost to be on fire.
Nothing unusual about that, you’re thinking – and you’re right. The color comes every fall and it is stupendous and wonderful – but hardly a surprise. It just goes to show where my mind was – or rather where it wasn’t: Fall seems to have snuck up when I wasn’t looking. (After a long, rather slow-paced summer, September came with a roar of activity, everything happening at once, and I’ve been preoccupied with many, many things.)
Nothing unusual about that, you’re thinking – and you’re right. The color comes every fall and it is stupendous and wonderful – but hardly a surprise. It just goes to show where my mind was – or rather where it wasn’t: Fall seems to have snuck up when I wasn’t looking. (After a long, rather slow-paced summer, September came with a roar of activity, everything happening at once, and I’ve been preoccupied with many, many things.)
John Lennon wrote: “Life is what happens to you while you’re making other plans.” Pretty good line, I think. But more accurate, I believe, would be: “Life is what happens while you’re looking the other way.”
That is not to say that the tasks which occupy my time are not real or important. Much of what I do is well worth doing and all of it is certainly real. But sometimes – and don’t tell me I’m having senior moments! – you find yourself lifting your eyes from whatever has preoccupied your time and think: Where did the day, the week, the month go? How did it get to be the beginning of fall – when it was just the end of August?
Now, before you get to thinking that I am whining about being too busy, I want to tell you that’s not what I’m on about here. No, not at all. I am reminding myself – and anybody who cares to read this – of the pleasure and yes, Christian duty, of paying attention to the wonderful life – in this wonderful world – that God has given us. I sometimes think that all of God’s creation conspires to wake us up. Priest and poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote these famous words of praise (excerpted from The Grandeur of God):
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. . . .
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things. .
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
I hope Father Hopkins will forgive me for mangling his wonderful poem (I suggest taking the time to read the full text) – but you get the point, I hope:
Life is precious
God’s creation is beautiful
Every day is a gift to be lived
God bless this day to you – and you to the day.
--Pastor Mark
That is not to say that the tasks which occupy my time are not real or important. Much of what I do is well worth doing and all of it is certainly real. But sometimes – and don’t tell me I’m having senior moments! – you find yourself lifting your eyes from whatever has preoccupied your time and think: Where did the day, the week, the month go? How did it get to be the beginning of fall – when it was just the end of August?
Now, before you get to thinking that I am whining about being too busy, I want to tell you that’s not what I’m on about here. No, not at all. I am reminding myself – and anybody who cares to read this – of the pleasure and yes, Christian duty, of paying attention to the wonderful life – in this wonderful world – that God has given us. I sometimes think that all of God’s creation conspires to wake us up. Priest and poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote these famous words of praise (excerpted from The Grandeur of God):
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. . . .
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things. .
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
I hope Father Hopkins will forgive me for mangling his wonderful poem (I suggest taking the time to read the full text) – but you get the point, I hope:
Life is precious
God’s creation is beautiful
Every day is a gift to be lived
God bless this day to you – and you to the day.
--Pastor Mark
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