Shade Tree Wisdom 7/12/12

          It’s been raining all week, and is to continue for a while, and we are grateful, for the wildlife is responding to more cover and better browse. Said a wildlife manager “There are fawns everywhere, and ducks and quails and other birds are nesting again all over.” Good signs that we are past the drought in this area of Texas.

          In our backyard there are some spider lilies and cannas blooming. Each as perfect as if they were grown for show. And the only eye to see them is our eye. Reminds me of a line or two from Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard”. Remember them?
     “Full many a gem of purest ray serene
      The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
      Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
      And waste its sweetness on the desert air.”

          God’s creation is always perfect, but Solomon said of us, “I found that though God made them, upright, each has turned away to follow his own downward path”, Eccl. 7,29.

          So enter our gracious God with the Gospel, the story of how He saved us from this ‘downward path’ to bring us salvation as a gift, by sending Jesus to take our place, pay the penalty we earned by our “downward path”, and rise again to show that God accepted the terrible price. So that St. Paul could write, “By grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.” Eph 2, 8.9.

          May this truth grow in your heart through daily prayer and reading of His Holy Word. And God bless the day.

GPD 7/12/12