3-23-20<\/p>\n
To write of perfect days when every day lately \u2013 no, every hour \u2013 seems filled with dread. To ask us to stop and savor, or even search hard for, good news, good times, and a good tomorrow\u2026 seems naive or crazy these days.<\/p>\n
Well, let us be crazy for a moment. It might keep us from going insane.<\/p>\n
Someone threw the word psithurism<\/em> at me recently. I will tell you, it is the precise and compact term for one of nature\u2019s supernal gifts \u2013 the sound of a breeze rustling through trees. In Estes Park, CO, after the Christian Writers Conference, up the \u201chill,\u201d every year I visit a grove of aspen trees whose wind-kissed sounds are like the tones of a distant organ. When winds sometime meet mountain snowbanks and desert sand dunes they produce eerie but beautiful sounds; music, almost. Where there are rock formations and in caves, breezes can bring forth heavenly chords.<\/p>\n Wondrous coincidences explained by science, or God\u2019s messages \u2013 like rainbows \u2013 of His presence, His hand in creation, His reminders of lovingkindness? It makes no difference, which, to believers, because with God there are no coincidences anyway; but He ordered the moon and the stars and enabled such blessings.<\/p>\n Everyday blessing they are. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote in \u201cA Day of Sunshine\u201d:<\/p>\n I hear the wind among the trees God is in all. Creation proclaims His glory. That means sunshine and<\/em> shadow; rain and<\/em> drought; good times and<\/em> \u2013 sometimes \u2013 hard times. I do not believe God sends sickness or disease. He is not a child abuser. Yet we struggle to comprehend the \u201cbad\u201d…<\/p>\n We wonder why God \u201cpermits\u201d viruses, plagues, epidemics. People ponder and pray these very days about this. It has always seemed clear to me that there is sin the world \u2013 nurtured further by humankind\u2019s rebelliousness, evil acts, and, yes, our sin natures. Nature can be beautiful: the way God created. But we waste our gifts, pollute and corrupt, and wonder why nature, sometimes \u2013 creatures, weather, resources \u2013 \u201cturns on us.\u201d Do we deserve things like pandemics? We say no, especially about innocent victims.<\/p>\n But this is our world. Is it God\u2019s will, any more than cancers or tornadoes? The Lord can chastise in many ways, but we should not look for lessons or punishment in every act like the Coronavirus. It might be so but rather we should look to the God who loves us and shows His love and mercy in so many other ways.<\/p>\n The clouds are stormy? Blue skies and bright sunshine still are above those clouds.<\/p>\n The agonies of birth pangs yet bring forth beautiful babies, miracles of life, souls to love.<\/p>\n The suffering and death of Jesus Christ had to be endured, as per prophecy, in order to bring Salvation to the human race.<\/p>\n We cannot see or understand fully, not all the time; in fact very seldom. The ways of the Lord are inscrutable. His acts do not depend on our understanding of them. His ways are not subject to our approval. His plans will not come up for our votes.<\/p>\n A sickness in our household, or a pandemic sweeping the globe ought to be no different in terms of our responses. God help us, let us curse the little virus less and trust in our mighty God more. And praise Him. Is not God bigger than a microscopic virus?<\/p>\n His sun still shines brightly behind those dark clouds.<\/p>\n + + +<\/p>\n
\nPlaying celestial symphonies;
\nI see the branches downward bent,
\nLike keys of some great instrument.<\/em><\/p>\n