Something happens when God snatches away familiarity through the passage of time. Rebirth. Revision. Renewal. And out of this newness comes remembrance. Standing on the beach after years of being inland, I remember my childhood. I see inprints of God in the sights and sounds that are now uncommon to me.
I cannot help but pick up shells at the beach. How many of those blue mussel shells have I picked up over the years? And yet I am compelled towards one more. That blue against the gray down below my feet, and up above the gray clouds hiding a hopeful bit of blue. As I bend down to pick up the shell I marvel at all this beauty. So many grains of sand, shells that have been ground up and beat up by waves and crabs and tennis shoes until they are no longer shells of blue, white, purple, pink, red. All is gray now, grains snuggled against grains. The small added together to make the large.
How much beauty goes unnoticed? Camoflauged anenomes. Clam squirts. A hungry heron. The crabs hiding under the rocks. Each barnacle. Each shell. I cannot see them all. Their beauty outnumbers me.
So I start to think of all other parts of creation that secretly serve their creator. The moments missed by the human eye. Salmon swimming upstream. A frog’s wild jump. The butterfly’s emergence. Beavers building. Water evaporating. The fern unfurling. A doe birthing a fawn in quiet green pastures.
He leads me in quiet green pastures. Green for abundance.
There is an Eye that sees them all. Creator Beauty, smiling upon his six-day portfolio which could aptly be entitled, Spoken-Into-Being.
Unseen beauty is not limited to nature. Who knows a man’s spirit besides the Lord? It is the Spirit that knows the hearts of all, and I cannot help but wonder at the beauty that waits to be revealed. The beauty I refuse to let the Spirit surface in me. How the heart and mind lies down in quiet, green Spirit-filled pastures and births beauty – new ideas, impossible dreams, amorphous desires that grow into skeletal realities.
Sondra, this is great. I was with you on the beach and my eyes were so focused on the beauty of grandchildren that I realize from your blog that I missed a lot of the other beauty the Creator has fashioned. But I fully agree with your longing that the Holy Spirit open us up to more of the Lord’s beauty…everywhere.
Sondra~ you have been given a beautiful gift of words to express yourself. I do not have that gift but I find great joy in reading your blog. Thank you!