===2010 in Review===

We’re having a quiet Christmas time this year.  it’s quietly sneaking up on us anyway!  Haven’t been out in nature much this week, unless the mall counts as it’s a natural place to go in December!  So I offer you our year in very brief review.  Good to take a look back before marching into the new one…

 

January—our now annual honeymoon in the big city…lookin’ out the window of our hotel.

February--The Olympic torch comes to town and our little town has a big celebration!!

 

March—a miniature microcosm on the mountain

April--Bumbling about up Scout

May—Sailing to our favorite haunts in the ‘Ragged Islands’

June—Summer is come and gardens and flowers

July—The tree that has now become this year’s Christmas tree.  Homegrown!

…Sailing and beachcombing

… and Alaska!

August—Lakes and water and sun and more sailing…

…and smiling with cycling friends.

 

September—out and about

October—the season’s last blooms

November—last color before winter

…and wet walks

and December comes round again with all the glory of the heavens declaring the glory of God.

“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and good will to men on whom His favor rests.”

 

Merry Christmas to you and yours!

--LS

Take Joy

All thy works with joy surround Thee,
Earth and heaven reflect thy rays,
Stars and angels sing around Thee,
Center of unbroken praise:
Field and forest, vale and mountain,
Blooming meadow, flashing sea,
Chanting bird and flowing fountain,
Call us to rejoice in Thee.


I seem to have this song singing through my mind.  It is the second verse of Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee and rings as sweetly as it did on my wedding twenty-seven years ago today.  And though I haven't the pictures to do it justice this week, I will post some gleanings from my vantage point of the week...

Take joy,

LS

"...yet I will rejoice in the LORD;  I will take joy in the God of my salvation." Hab.3:18

Season snippets…

Not too much walking happening around here this week…it was time for our annual Christmas get-together.  So I share instead some advice for the season and always…

String some Lights and smile because Jesus is the Light of the world!

Create some snow if you have none around.  (This was incidentally the winning entry in our Snowflake Making contest!)

 

Join hands with a friend or two and dance in the Light!

…because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”
Luke 1:78,79

--LS

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.  Why do men then now not reck his rod?*


Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

 
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

 

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs--

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings."

--by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)

I am especially reveling this week in the wonder of being given eyes to see God-- in nature, in His Word, and at work in the lives of those who don't yet concede to who He is... I went and found a patch of darkness to shine in and oh! how wonderful it is to know the light of Life in dark places.

"In the beginning was the Word,...

All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

In him was life; and the life was the light of men.

And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not...

That was the true Light which, coming into the world, gives light to every man.

He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not..."

(excerpts from John 1)

--LS

Wherever you may be, let your light shine and together we'll light up the darkness!

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*"reck His rod" = heed His divine authority