Hello Spring

Hello Spring,

You have been a long time coming. I am glad to see you. You bring hope that warmth and color will once more grace earth's face. It is a brave thing to do, and that is why I like you. You are a heartening gift from a good Giver, and I rejoice in the joy you spring on the world.

There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice.
— John Calvin

It is May, and from my bedroom window I have watched you grow stronger and stronger. Other places you come swiftly, but not here. Here, you come slowly. I wonder if that is why I savor your arrival so much. Old Man Winter's dying breaths still blow over the snow-shrouded mountains, reluctant to relinquish power, but he is fading fast. The grass bravely pushes up from its brown grave, the birds raise hopeful voices, the rain makes mirrors of heaven out of the mud, and bravely you come steadily home.

I remember watching you this time last year, from a hospital window. One May day you looked softly in and spread your sunrise glow on our grief, and it seemed the gentleness of our Maker caressed our hearts the morning my infant brother, Isaac Samuel Triumph King, went to be with Him. And I cannot help but think with eager anticipation of the day you come to stay, and spread your glow over the Triumphal procession when all the King's subjects will dance with joy in His unfading glory, Home to stay.

Yes, you remind me of something deeper than what you seem. I think every brilliant color and keen clean scent and lengthening sunbeam is a proof of something more...

When I look across the sun-struck fields, I know in my inmost bones that my joy is not solely in the spring, for spring alone, being always returning, would be always sad. There is somebody or something walking there, to be crowned with flowers: and my pleasure is in some promise yet possible and in the resurrection of the dead.
— G.K. Chesterton, A Miscellany Of Men

Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in springtime.
— Martin Luther

Yes, you are more than a season. You are a Promise. The brown earth cannot hold back the tender green grass forever, because, once upon a time in history, it could not hold back a God-Man for even three days. And every year since that morning, you repeat the Promise.

We, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. — 2 Peter 3:13

I like you. Please stay a while, and show us the beauty that grows from the dirt, our Creator's glory reflected in puddles of sky.

Sincerely,

audrey

On The Third Day (Quote)

On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realized the new wonder; but even they hardly realized that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but of the dawn.

- G.K. Chesterton (The Everlasting Man)

Dragons Can Be Beaten

This dragon was sketched by a little valiant knight-friend of mine. I couldn't resist playing with it just for fun; I added color and a Chesterton quote for good measure.

“Fairy Tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”

-G.K. Chesterton

-a

Snow Designs

There is nothing quite like waking up to a still calm, the sun's sleepy rays reflected off the branches of frosted trees. Imagination whispers in my ear that they are actually rock candy on big sticks. The brilliant blue sky and white snow create an ambiance of purity and freshness...and wonder.

G.K Chesterton said (he's just so quotable, you know) that "The world will never starve for want of wonders, but from want of wonder." He also said, “I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.” Waking up to a crisp new morning with reminders of our awesome Creator, His purity, and Jesus' purity frosted over us like the snow crystals encrusting the bare bark of the trees, sure invokes gratitude and joy...doubled by wonder.

The snow brings to mind Isaiah 1:18,

“ Come now, and let us reason together,” Says the LORD, “ Though your sins are like scarlet, They shall be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They shall be as wool."

A wonderful promise.



















Did I mention it was pretty nippy? :)

Christmas Musings with a dash of Chesterton

This Christmas was good, in all senses of the word. We put up a tall tree one week before Christmas (we ran out of time and had to buy it). I got all my shopping done 4 days before Christmas. We went caroling at a nursing home, and were blessed by those dear faces. We drank eggnog and hot cocoa. We lit candles for Advent, Dad read Christmas devotions. Mom read John Piper's The Innkeeper; and it really touched me again this year (I highly recommend it to you). We watched the most classic Christmas movie of all time, and a personal favorite, It's a Wonderful Life. We were blessed to have each of us here under one roof, together. But mostly, this Christmas, like every Christmas, and every day, was good because the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and God saw that it was good.

Since creation and hearts fell in the Garden of Eden so long ago, the world has spun upside-down. When the realization of the curse hit Adam and Eve, God spoke a Promise to the serpent, and to mankind. "And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel." (Genesis 3:15)

From that time forward, God's people looked for the Promise. Abraham a caught glimpse of it in the stars when God promised that through him all the nations of the earth would be blessed. He saw it again with Issac as they stared at the ram caught in the thicket - God would provide. Moses looked for the Light and caught a glimpse of it in a bush that burned but was not consumed. He took off his sandals because he stood on holy ground. The Israelites wandered, looking for a place to call Home. With hangdog hearts, mankind stood condemned, "but the tide turns now at Bethlehem."*

The earth almost went to Hell. Instead, the greatest paradox of history, Heaven went to earth, and even further below. Christ, the God-man, was born in a dugout. "That is perhaps the mightiest of the mysteries of the cave. It is already apparent that though men are said to have looked for hell under the earth, in this case it is rather heaven that is under the earth."**

The stars parted, and God placed His foot on unholy ground. Finally, a war cry went out into the silent night, and the powers of darkness trembled. It was the cry of an infant. The shepherds came to see Him, the Good Shepherd, lying in a hay manger to become food for His sheep; to be the perfect Lamb, not caught in a thicket, but willingly offered for His people. The wise men sought true Wisdom and found it in a Child. Jesus had no place to lay His head, but He became a Home for us. Jesus had no sin, but He became sin for us, so we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

And that, my friends, is why Christmas is so good. To wrap up, I give you a Christmas poem more eloquent than my ramblings:

There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.

For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.

Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honour and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.

A child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam;
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost---how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky's dome.

This world is wild as an old wife's tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.

To an open house in the evening
Home shall all men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.

- By G.K. Chesterton

*Lyrics from This is War by Dustin Kensrue
**From G.K. Chesterton's book, "Everlasting Man", chapter titled "God in the Cave".