Saturday August 22, 2020
Judith Hilt
Create
On these lazy, hazy dog-days of summer, it's easy to focus on the dried out sections of lawns and drooping tree branches everywhere. Here in southern Maine and New Hampshire, we are classified as a "gold zone", which means we're in a "moderate drought". Because of the Pandemic, we've been forced to spend too much time at home, often not paying close enough attention to the natural world all around us. Perhaps we need to focus on the simple pleasures of nature instead what we can't have or do.
For instance: I don't remember the first time my mum took me outside one summer afternoon to lay in the grass and watch the clouds glide by. She explained that there were often shapes in those clouds and if we stared at them long enough we would see all kinds of things. For instance: as I look out the north-facing window in my study right now, I see a cheeseburger, a heart and two dolphins leaping out of the water! But wait...the cheeseburger has turned into a sea monster with a creepy, beady eye!! The great thing about cloud shapes is that all we need is a window and our imagination to see them. Mum never did stop watching the clouds. When she was 81, she developed colon cancer and after her chemo sessions we would stop at York Hospital for lobster rolls. It was a short trip to the harbour beach to eat them while watching the clouds come rolling toward us over the eastern horizon.
Growing up on the southern tip of Maine, it was natural to love being outside year-round. God's handiwork was everywhere I looked: thick pine forests circling my grandparents dairy farm. The Piscataqua River gently rising and falling along the shore in Eliot. Sunday school lessons often focused on nature: the fourth chapter of Mark has four stories of Jesus and nature. Luke chapter 6:43 is a classic example of trees and their fruit. Of course Genesis chapter 1 emphasizes how much nature means to God. What stories do you have about nature? When I married an Air Force boy in 1967, I left the lush "greens" of Maine and lived in Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arizona. The difference in God's nature handiwork couldn't have been more profound. It was so brown...not the lush greens I had grown up with! As stark, dry and unfamiliar as it was to my eyes, it was still God's handiwork and had a quiet beauty all its own. The message I learned over the 34 years I was away from Maine is that no matter where we are or what our surroundings look like, God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. We will get through this drought and the Pandemic and He will be by our side every step of the way.