Peaks and Valleys

I took this picture a few years ago as we crossed over into Canada to view Glacier National Park from the Canadian side.  The snow capped mountain peaks are breathtakingly beautiful and majestic, yet nothing can grow above the tree line.  It’s in the valley, watered by the mountain snow melt, and bathed in the life giving warmth of the sun, that flowers bloom and crops grow to feed and nourish us.  Life is a combination of peaks and valleys.  The peaks are those times of inspiration when our spirits soar to new heights of understanding, clarity and gratitude.  We know we are loved.  We know God is good.  From our vantage point on the mountain peak, we can see it so clearly.  However, it is in the valleys of life with all of its ups and downs, its trials, and disappointments, that we grow and produce the fruit of God’s presence within our lives.  The peaks provide the insight and inspiration so we know that we have a resource above our own as we toil in the valleys of life.  Maybe that’s why there are two peaks to every valley?  Jesus is called the lily of the valley, and he invites us to bloom with him. 

Is It Tomatoe or Tomato?

It’s that wonderful time of year when, instead of buying store bought tasteless tomatoes, I can go to my garden and pick fresh, truly vine ripened tomatoes.  I grew up on a farm and so we always had lots of fresh tomatoes in the summer time.  As a kid, the only way I’d eat sliced tomatoes was with lots of sugar on them.  When I got older I learned to eat sliced tomatoes seasoned only with salt and pepper.  Last year I experimented a bit, and came up with an olive oil dressing, which includes different herbs, that I drizzle on my sliced tomatoes.  I top it off with crumbled feta cheese and a small amount of crumbled blue cheese as well.  It is simply delicious, and now I can’t imagine eating sliced tomatoes any other way.  When the apostle Paul writes; “When I was a child, I spoke, I thought, I reasoned like a child, but when I became a man I put away childish things”, I think I know what he’s talking about.  And, it’s not about putting sugar on his tomatoes.  He’s talking about growing up in his understanding of God and practice of faith.  The essence of what Paul is saying, is that whatever is not seasoned with love is useless and indeed tasteless.  No matter how great the revelation or how intellectually deep the understanding, without love it’s worse than a store bought tomato purchased in the dead of winter.  Maybe Christian maturity is about growing to the place where we can’t imagine not being loved by God and not loving others as God loves us!         

Life Is Not Always A Picnic

As a shutterbug, I really enjoy the beauty and wonder of a sunrise or a sunset.  This is a photo I took of a sunrise.  If I had to give a name to this picture it might be, “life is hard, but God is good.”  Life is not always a picnic, a vacation, or a time of celebration.  Sometimes life is hard and we can’t see much beyond today.  But God is good, God is faithful.  The writer of Lamentations reminds us that it’s because of God’s great and awesome love for us that we are not consumed.  God’s compassion never fails, but is new every morning.  Doubt, the anxieties and hardships of life, and even our sins need not consume us.  For as surely as the sun rises in the east every morning, so does God’s love and compassion towards us.   

Butterfly People

On Saturday, I captured this photo of a beautiful tiger swallowtail butterfly in our backyard.  The metamorphosis a caterpillar goes through to become a beautiful butterfly is, no doubt, the reason the butterfly symbolizes resurrection, hope and new life.  Recently I heard about and then read some amazing stories about butterfly people.  It seems that when the tornado hit Joplin, MO on the 22^nd of May, some of the surviving children said they were helped and kept safe from harm by the butterfly people.  I guess if you were a small child describing an angel with wings, what better description than calling them butterfly people.  Were there angels in Joplin, Mo the night the tornado hit?  Yes, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them did have wings.  We are all called to be butterfly people, messengers of God, showing God’s love and compassion to others.  Where is God in the midst of life’s storms?  God is present working through the butterfly people, and yes some do have wings.  The rest of us are still earthbound, at least for a little while longer.  

Better Than PB&J

This spring and summer it's been a pleasure watching Baltimore orioles visit our birdfeeder especially designed for their nectar loving appetite.  They love the grape jelly we put out for them, and they even prefer it over orange slices.  A few weeks ago house finches started showing up at our regular birdfeeder, which is about twelve feet from the oriole feeder.  The funny thing is that one of the female house finch started going to the oriole feeder and sampling the grape jelly.  She must have seen the orioles feeding from it and thought she’d give it a try.  Evidently she likes it because she keeps coming back for more.  The orioles aren’t too thrilled about her eating from their feeder and they chase her away when they catch her at their favorite café.  The above picture captures our grape jelly loving finch, a Baltimore oriole, and just below the feeder flying right towards the camera is a grey catbird.  The Psalmist encourages us with these words, “Taste and see that the Lord is good.”  Maybe as others see us tasting of God’s goodness in all the different circumstances of life, like the house finch, they will want to join the buffet.    

Controlled Flooding

For the past seven years our family has camped at Lewis and Clark Reservoir near Yankton, SD.  This weekend we had the added bonus of not only boating on the lake in the cool water, (with nearly 100 degree days it felt good) but also driving to Gavins Point Dam to see the spectacular release of water from the dam.  The park lady told us that they were releasing 164 thousand cubic feet of water per second.  To get an idea of how much water that is, I read that Yankton's Memorial Park has an Olympic-sized swimming pool, which holds about 600,000 gallons of water. At 150 thousand cubic feet per second the water rushing out of Gavins Point Dam would take just half-a-second to fill it.  It’s a pretty awesome sight, but not so much for the folks downstream.  Their fields, homes and towns are flooded because of it.   Ironic isn’t it, dams were built for flood control and yet it’s the release of this vast amount of water that is causing the flooding.  Maybe the lesson to be learned here is that we really can't control mother-nature or always outguess what she’s going to do in a given year.  Floods happen.  The prophet Isaiah promises that a time is coming when those who are thirsty will be flooded with God’s spirit.  I’m thinking that through Jesus Christ the vast eternal reservoir of God’s goodness and grace is being released upon humanity.  It’s enough to fill every person, and to wash away all of our doubts and fears.  So may the flood gates of God’s mercies be opened wide enough until every soul is swept away in the unconditional love of God.      

No Crystal Ball

In our backyard we have what is called a gazing ball or reflecting ball.  As you can see from the photo, it does a fairly good job of reflecting its surroundings.  It’s not a crystal ball that one can gaze into and predict or see the future.  Unfortunately some use the scriptures in this way.  The most recent example of this is the guy who predicted that the rapture would take place last May.  It didn’t.  He also thinks the scriptures predict that the end of the world will happen in October.  I think one of the main functions of the scriptures is to show us what God is like.  The scriptures tell us the good news of God’s unending, relentless love.  A love that will never fail, but wins  in the end as God makes all things new.  God doesn’t give us all the details as to how God’s going to pull it off, nor does God give us the dates as to when it will happen.  However, God does ask us to have faith in him for all of our days, the good days as well as the bad ones.  I think that being a follower of Christ is being like a reflecting ball.   Reflecting the graces of God in all of life’s circumstances and the surroundings we find ourselves in.  Admittedly, that’s a lot harder to do then simply predicting gloom and doom.  To reflect the life of God’s Spirit, we must allow our hearts to continue to be close to God’s heart.  Amazingly, as we continue to gaze upon the goodness of God, the hope that reverberates throughout the scriptures steals its way into our hearts.  In Christ we have something far greater than a crystal ball.