Shade Tree Wisdom 4/14/09

There is an art piece on Woodlands Parkway titled “The Dreamer”. It shows a lad, barefoot, lying under a shade tree, chewing on a stalk of grass, hands behind his head, just lying there, dreaming. That is, he is doing nothing, no task of work. But he is doing something. He is allowing his mind to wander, maybe about his future, or “what if” concepts. Just allowing thoughts to drift through his mind. And often when I pass it I wonder, “Why don’t we find time to do that? Just nothing special I mean, just relax, slow down, let the busy world sweep by, and look inward a bit? Often times like that find us digging out solutions to a problem we have been working on, or problems we have been struggling with, or just a new outlook on life in general.

There is another Art piece showing a youth standing on the shoulders of his father and depicting the “We see farther because we stand on the shoulders of another”. In the hustle and bustle of daily life we often tend to forget what we have today is due in part to what others did before us. A reporter asking President Reagan about his not using a computer and sort of sneering because the President admitted he was not fluent in using it, but added, “We invented it for you”.
So we twitter and text-message and get online and Blog and take it all for granted, forgetting the people who spent late hours and experimented to make it all work.

Then there is an art piece in the Woodlands Library lobby showing a boy reading a book, and at his feet a stack to be read. And it calls to mind that people today aren’t readers any longer. Their reading comes in bits on email or from Google and checking out a Blog. Hey, there is no pleasure quite like having a good book, a quiet corner, and reading, and getting caught up in the author’s imagination. What happens next, and why did they not see that coming, etc. With no interruptions except maybe a friend who shares our pleasure and the reading of a good Book.

Then it is good to look at Psalm 73, especially the assuring “Nevertheless” in verse 23 "Nevertheless I am continually with thee: thou hast holden me by my right hand. 24 Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory. 25 Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee. 26 My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion forever. 27 For, lo, they that are far from thee shall perish: thou hast destroyed all them that go a whoring from thee. 28 But it is good for me to draw near to God: I have put my trust in the Lord GOD, that I may declare all thy works.”
For when we sit and dream, remember the Lord is ever there keeping his promise, “I am with thee to the end of the world”. God bless the day.
GPD 4/14/09