Nature

Fresh Air

Kinetic "Daisy" wind spinner in our yard

Kinetic "Daisy" wind spinner in our yard

This summer has featured many temperate days with low humidity and cool nights for leaving windows open and air conditioning off.  

In Michigan, we are blessed with three seasons of moderate temperatures that provide an abundance of fresh air moving through our living spaces. We have ceiling fans in every room running year-round, keeping cool or warm air moving around us all the time.

Breezes soothe me.  I have thee wind chimes around our house and I recently received a wind spinner for our backyard. The kinetic ones with fans on two sides that rotate in different directions in the lightest of breezes particularly fascinate me.  

Nothing like “hearing” the wind pass through our two tubular chimes or stir our bamboo one into a gentle cloppity-clop, cloppity-clop rhythm. Even in the dead of winter, if I notice the chimes stirring outside our dining room window where I read the Bible and journal each morning, I will crack the window just a little to hear them better.  

Chimes adjacent to my morning devotions spot.

Chimes adjacent to my morning devotions spot.

Hot coffee, fresh air, and a lovely, breeze-stirred chime sets me up perfectly for my morning time with the Lord. The sounds and sensation of the wind coming and going refreshes my being, evidence to me that the wind’s author, God, is near.

Recall the apostles' reaction when Jesus calmed the wind and seas in the fourth chapter of Mark’s gospel.

“They were terrified and asked each other, ‘Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!”’ (Mark 4:41, NIV)

Whereas God’s power over tempestuous winds speaks to the awesome magnitude of his power, I am drawn to the story of how God chose to personify Himself to Elijah.

“Go out and stand before me on the mountain,” the Lord told him. And as Elijah stood there, the Lord passed by, and a mighty windstorm hit the mountain. It was such a terrible blast that the rocks were torn loose, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake there was a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire there was the sound of a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his cloak and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave.

And a voice said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”  (1st Kings 19:11-13, NLT)

Perhaps God's gentle whisper was like the calmest of breezes or the silence in the middle of the night when all is still.

Water, woods and wind are three natural features that particularly captivate me. While we don’t live within sight of a lake or river or bordering a woods, our neighborhood is plentifully treed and neighbors adorn their homes with shrubs and flowering greenery, tended lawns and various ornamental trees and plants to keep nature close to our mutual spaces.

For wind, our chimes and spinner convert fresh breezes to a chorus for our listening and visual enjoyment.  When the breeze at ground level is too slight to stir our chimes or wind spinner, I need only look to the nearby treetops to be assured that the wind is ever present, like God

Like physical space is stifling without a steady supply of fresh air, so my faith stagnates when I am closed to new ways that God is working in and through me.  When I am stuck or digging into a stance that shuts God out, He has a way of opening me with his "fresh air" to let me know he is near and ready when I am.  

“He makes the clouds his chariot
and rides on the wings of the wind.
He makes winds his messengers,
flames of fire his servants. ”
— Psalm 104: 3-4, NIV

Nature: Listening or Suppressing?

For lawn-loving Do-It-Yourselfers, Scotts 4-Step program

For lawn-loving Do-It-Yourselfers, Scotts 4-Step program

If we are paying attention, seasonal transitions bear powerful messages.  Take note as spring finally arrives to Michigan.  

Winter 2016-17 was light on snow but featured many stretches of cold, damp, sun-starved days. Notwithstanding the plethora of Michiganders who complain about snow, at least snow can be played in.  Snowless winter along with damp cold essentially renders the out of doors uninhabitable.

Impotent winter also makes for long, SLOW shifts at the hardware store where I work.  Pallets of salt and rows of snow shovels and ice scrapers and aisles clogged with snow blowers intended to tame and suppress winter are bypassed by customers heading to consider paint colors instead.  

While some form of each season is assured every year, we humans devote more attention to suppressing nature than tuning to its voice.  Despite our considerable knowledge and wherewithal, nature puts up formidable resistance to our best attempts to tame and suppress it.

In spring and summer, nature suppression shifts from reducing ice and snow impact to eliminating impediments to growing desirable foliage. Here in suburbia, the surest money bet regards growing great grass and controlling invasive weeds.

In the hardware business, Scott’s 4-Step program is a popular lawn fertilizing program for the DIY crowd.  Step 1 is a crabgrass preventer and lawn food that works best if warmer temps arrive in early April. If winter’s cool lingers a little too long, customers skip to the second weed and feed step.

This year spring held back so crabgrass preventer sales lagged after initially surging.  Even though May just arrived, everyone is already onto weed and feed with store supply barely meeting demand.

Untamed nature features varieties of plants indigenous to climate and countryside. Lawn-loving people on the other hand prefer graded ground, lush, weedless turf and plantings of trees and cultivated bushes and flowers arranged in fanciful contours.  Nature manifests fine as the elements dictate, but humanity’s taming requires considerable earth-rearranging, chemical combos and inordinate amounts of water.  

Recommended water consumption for a person is about a half gallon a day.  That's 3.5 gallons each week.  A healthy lawn needs about an inch of water a week, 3,100 gallons for a 5,000 square foot lawn - enough to sustain 885 people!

Having a sparse budget for landscaping, I fertilize sparingly and water almost never.  However, I can toil for free!  Thanks to my part-time job, I have more time available to be outside during the day to experience and observe spring’s arrival and manner.

I'm slowly coming around to thanking the Lord for clearing this space in my life to simply abide by what he brings.  Where I live, the peacefulness of our sedate neighborhood while everyone else is off at their day jobs is violated by the busy M5 highway nearby imposing its considerable din on all the nature it cuts through on its way to wherever.

Yes, God charged his first people to steward his creation, but rebellious humanity inclines more toward manipulation and suppression of nature than listening for the rhythms and revelation nature prefers we tune our lives to. Meanwhile, nature seems to allow our imposition to recast it into something other than what God had in mind for us to do with it. However, its true power is really his, hiding just beneath its seemingly sedate surface, far surpassing ours.  

Meanwhile, nature most often presents as kindly, winsomely inviting us with its refreshment, wonder and inspiration.  As you pause to listen, be mindful that nature is created, not Creator. Nature draws us beyond, not to, itself to its Gardener ... and ours.  

“For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.”
— Romans 1:20, NLT