Status Updates From Turning of Days: Lessons fr...

“There’s a newness to these mornings, as new as if I were walking in Eden itself, fresh and full of hope. I’ve come to collect raspberries for breakfast, but more likely I’ve come to collect myself.”

Same tender and hopeful thoughts in my garden in the mornings!

“Now I wonder if the real difference between what is natural and what is supernatural is simply our ability to know it. Because if God is the God of creation, then all of nature is supernatural. If God is the God of miracles, then the supernatural is the most natural thing in the world…perhaps I’m the one who must relearn all I thought I knew.”

“But what if letting nature take its course sometimes means leaving room for the God of nature to act? What if letting him act sometimes means staying our hand and choosing to stay in the uncertainty? What if waiting on God sometimes looks like patience and self-control? What if it looks a lot like keeping watch over land in hospital beds and Robin’s nest?”

“Worship attends the earth’s seasons, not because the Earth is to be worshiped, but because seasons teach us the shape of faith. Order in variety. Stability in chaos. Trust in the unknown. So that by looking to the heavens, we find our feet on an ever turning earth.”

Goodness, if God is teaching me one thing, He is teaching it to me in a thousand places and this is it.

“Because in the end, a heart that longs for fruitfulness is also a heart that will work for it. A heart that hopes for goodness will plant and prune and weight and pray. Such a heart is not blind to the realities of life; it just knows no other way to live. And so understanding the stakes, such a heart stakes a claim anyway. Such a heart hopes in God.”

“I wonder if our search for safety means that we’re not searching for goodness…goodness does not grow in neat clumps or carefully tended rows. It is wild, and you have to work for it. You’ll have to go out in the chilly spring rain and tramp for miles. You’ll have to keep a keen eye…You’ll have to admit what you don’t know, and in humility and patience, learn from others.”

“…God reveals Himself and His will. He doesn’t shout his plans from the mountains so much as he repeats them over and over in low, quiet songs that only makes sense to those who know the significance of them. Like spring in Appalachia, his plans unfold in gentle, persistent ways—sometimes two steps forward and one back, but always in rhythm and always in time.”