"If you look the right way you can see that the whole world is a garden"
~Frances H. Barnett
Even though you wouldn't know it if you saw it, I am thinking about my garden quite often.
Especially now. I did take some time off in November and December, and was quite happy to give it almost no thought at all.
But late January and early February it begins again.
Seeing the bulbs emerging out of their winter sleep, the fiddleheads of the ferns fattening up, readying to unfurl, purple peony pips erupting . . .The rumblings of a silent explosion all around us!
(Sorry, I'm waxing poetic!)
I can never understand how people don't even notice! How do you trudge along, day after day without experiencing the
THRILL of SPRING?!
I believe a great gift my parents gave to me was the gift of SEEING.
They taught me (yes, I believe it is a skill that is learned) to
NOTICE
what was going on around me.
And it is clearly a skill which the LORD places value on, urging us to be alert, to awaken and to watch. The elders are described in Hebrews as those who "watch over" our souls.
PAY ATTENTION.
That's what I'm getting out of this.
Because when we pay attention to all that is around us
We SEE GOD all around us.
We see GOD in the spring buds. We see GOD in the sunrise and the sunset.
We hear HIM in the children's laughter as they walk past, on their way home from school.
We smell HIS goodness in the rain and the pines.
And when we begin to SEE
The PRAISE OF THANKSGIVING
cannot help but flow from us.
"Praise God from whom all blessings flow . . ."
