A Wonder-full weekday wander.

Time for a wonder-full walk.  Want to come along? With temperatures soaring to the 70’s - 30 or 40 degrees warmer than normal!!- we won’t even need our sweatshirts! (As you can tell, our walk happened a few days ago, since today is a rainy "high of 47 degrees" day!! I guess this makes our wonder-full walk even more of a treasure!) 
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Let’s wander along Hickory Lane and Cemetery Road; the sky is a canvas of cloud splendor, and it might take us forever to walk a mile...I keep stopping to look up, to turn fully around and look again, gaping at the shifting magic overhead.  The scene changes, reframes, comes into focus, fades, and changes again.  I can't seem to find any words but Wow!  And thanks! 

facing north east at 4:19pm

facing south west at 4:22pm

In the flooded meadow, the puddles are full of clouds, it’s Longfellow’s “Infinite meadows of heaven” reflected in slop, and I think, “This is my life.” (Yours too?)  Still, it’s puddle-wonderful. (Thanks, e e cummings.)   

My life in five words: Heaven reflected in the mess.

My heart is so full I can barely breathe. For three days, that one new worship song has filled my mind, my heart; now it overflows, and I’m singing truth loud and scaring the birds.

Your deep, deep love 
Washes over me 
Your deep, deep love 
Fills my every need 
How I long to hear Your voice call out my name 
It draws me to Your deep, deep love...
(You can learn it and sing along right here!) 

I adapt it and sing it again -
"How I love to hear Your voice call out my name,
it draws me to Your deep deep love..."

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​The creek sings too, its own water music, lavishly splashing the full greenness of spring across a dead log.

​Willows wave promises, and I wave back.  

Overhead, a robin prances in the tree tops...(but won't perch for a clear photo!) 
​Bluebird call notes make my heart race; a cardinal sings in the underbrush.
​And look! In the thorn thicket, a perky Carolina wren announces himself.  

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Not all the sounds are music.  Near the still-frozen pond, geese are loudly out-of-sorts.  Probably, they wanted to take a float; their complaints rasp the air like rusty gate racket.  But I still love them.  They make me smile. 

And over everything, sky wonder. More extravagant than you would ever imagine seeing in this long valley in the drab of February.  The skyscape is full of glory, clouds of all sorts gather and disband, little windows of azure open and close, and I wonder what’s coming next...Jesus?  A cold front? Both?  

4:57 pm

4:57 pm

5:07pm

This vision of sky beauty and the smell of wet earth and the robin song of hope swell up inside of me and I’m sure if I don’t sing I’ll break wide open...

Were the whole realm of nature mine. (Wait...isn’t it all mine for the seeing and hearing and feeling touching and even tasting, because it’s all His and so am I, and it’s all gift?)

That were an offering... (a present, this present moment, my heart clear full, my vision fully clear for this glimpse of enough and glory, mud and clouds)

Far too small – (and yet it’s all I have to offer, my small presence, my small gifts, my small full soul, broken, mended, filling, spilling joy.)
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Love so amazing, so divine demands my soul, my life, my all. It’s small, but it’s my all...

and I fling it heavenward like a handful of feathers and of course it comes back all over me, 
joyful thanks pouring grace back over me. 
​ I’m walking on a cloud of His enoughness, and it carries me.

​Maybe tonight in my dreams, I’ll be flying.   

5:19pm

5:20pm

5:36pm Praying Hands.

5:44pm

5:49pm

Hummin(flyin!)B