Today was long and hot. The heat index reached 40 degrees - and that's before you go work in a hydroponics garden under a plastic canopy. Then when I got home I mowed the lawns. Even now, sitting writing this at 9pm, I am dripping with sweat (is that too much information?)But after I finished the lawns, at about 7:30pm, I went and lay on my back in the lagoon for half an hour and watched the stars come out.
It reminded me of a passage I read recently about the world in which we live. Thought I would copy it below. The photographs with it are all from my daily life: the lagoon over the road; the bright-pink frangipanis on one of our trees; Puka, one of our two baby chicks; C playing in the water, and trying out some new moves on the kayak; the underside of one of the salad greens at work (just to show that beauty can be found anywhere, not just on a tropical island - although that does help!); a weird and wonderful lichen which appeared on some trees a while back.
Here's the quote, from John Eldredge:
"If you learned about the garden of Eden in Sunday school with poster board and flannel graphs, you missed something. Imagine the most beautiful scenes you have ever known on this earth—rain forests, the prairie in full bloom, storm clouds over the African savanna, the Alps under a winter snow. Then imagine it all on the day it was born. It’s Tolkien’s Shire in its innocence, Iguazu Falls in the garden of The Mission, the opening scene of The Lion King.
"And it doesn’t stop there. Into this world God opens his hand, and the animals spring forth. Myriads of birds, in every shape and size and song, take wing—hawks, herons, warblers. All the creatures of the sea leap into it—whales, dolphins, fish of a thousand colors and designs. Thundering across the plains race immense herds of horses, gazelles, buffalo, running like the wind.
"It is more astonishing than we could possibly imagine. No wonder “the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy” (Job 38:7). A great hurrah goes up from the heavens!
"We have grown dull toward this world in which we live; we have forgotten that it is not normal or scientific in any sense of the word. It is fantastic. It is fairy tale through and through. Really now. Elephants? Caterpillars? Snow? At what point did you lose your wonder at it all?
"Even so, once in a while something will come along and shock us right out of our dullness and resignation.We come round a corner, and there before us is a cricket, a peacock, a stag with horns as big as he. Perhaps we come upon a waterfall, the clouds have made a rainbow in a circle round the sun, or a mouse scampers across the counter, pauses for a moment to twitch its whiskers, and disappears into the cupboard.
"And for a moment we realize that we were born into a world as astonishing as any fairy tale."*****
