Monday, February 28, 2011

Goodness in a Silent Afternoon




     The daffodils parade in a yellow so brazen it hurts the eyes, yet hang their heads in such humility you have to go low to see their faces.  After the snow melt, they've pushed up through the pine needles in the back corner of the yard, flaunting beauty in the three o'clock sun.  The cardinals are courting in the bushes behind, the jilted male, a third wheel, leaves in a hurry and flies so close to my head he scares me.  The hawk is hunting, flying high over tree tops.  Large and awkward the bumble bee makes his way to nectar, he too hears their siren song.  And so I sit, silent, on the cat's gravestone, waiting.  The words of  Psalm 62 come, from the days when we sang the Psalter in church,

"Surely in silence my soul waits on God, for my salvation comes from Him."

     But when the congregation sang it out, the Psalm sounded like lament.  Today is no lament.  I am waiting.  Silent.  I am watching His work, rejoicing.  Then I think of Wordsworth, his crowd, his host of daffodils:

I gazed - and gazed - but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought.

For oft, when on my couch I lie,
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon the inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
     
     Aren't we to gather God's goodness the way we gather daffodils, the memory of His goodness being our heart's treasure long after the flower of the moment fades and falls?

*Note on Geographica:  I'm going to try moving Ally's quizzes to Fridays' posts and see if that suits our schedule better than Mondays.

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