the nature of hope... hope in nature

On the banks of the Río Frío, Leakey, TX

“Our life finds tongues in trees,
books in running brooks,
sermons in stone and
good in everything.”

            ~William Shakespeare in “As You Like It,” Act II, Scene 1

From the spectacular Caribbean ocean waters of my childhood, to the serene Oklahoma wheat fields of my adult life, a love of nature has been a constant in my life.

Yes, I am an island girl, a beach lover. And, undeniably, it is standing at the edge of an ocean looking out into infinity that I most clearly and intimately catch a peek into God’s eternal nature.

Walking North Padre Island, TX

I love the shifting personality of the beach—from season to season, day to day, hour to hour.  Because, as Tom Hank’s character Chuck noted in the movie “Castaway,” “Who knows what the tide could bring?”

Yet rather than confine my ability and desire to experience God, my intense experience of God at the water’s edge simply magnifies my sense of God’s presence all around me. Like a toddler, I find myself shrieking, “More, more!” with every new encounter of God’s grandeur in creation.

Sunrise on plane, between Milwaukee & Denver

This weekend as I flew home from Milwaukee via Denver, I experienced yet another stunning sunrise, although this time without my Elena to enjoy it with!  As our plane neared Denver, I was surprised and awed as the land beneath me began to turn white.

But the best part of the landscape experience that morning came two hours later, as I flew out again, this time on my way to Oklahoma. What had previously looked like a solid white blanket of snow interrupted only by rivers and roads, had now become alive with brown and green ridges noting the landscape’s topographical differences.

Previously hidden by snow, the curves on the fields – like roots – now formed an outline resembling a bouquet of circles and rectangles.

Nature, like life, is continually changing. Is there a greater source of hope?

my backyard, 2012