Camp Blue Diamond

After spending a week-end in the woods with my family, I come away refreshed by their company and especially having caught up a little with our daughter from Ohio and her wonderful family. They are the ones missed most in the week to week routine of our lives.

I am reminded of the miraculous things that are happening inside the lives of those I love; things that have only a few outward signs and fruits, but internally, are daily, quietly, generating powerful life and growth. Both in the woods and in the lives of my family, I see the dynamic power of Love/God, at work.

Annie Dillard writes in one of my favorite outdoor books, ‘Pilgrim at Tinker Creek’:
“There is real power here, (in the trees) . It is amazing that trees can turn gravel, dirt, and bitter salts of earth into the soft-lipped lobes of leaves. As if I were to bite down on a slab of gravel and start to swell, bud, and flower.
Trees seem to do their feats so effortlessly. Every year a given tree creates absolutely from scratch, over ninety percent of its living parts. Water lifting up tree trunks can climb one hundred and fifty feet an hour; in full summer a tree can and does, heave a full ton of water every day.

A big elm in a single season might make as many as five to six million leaves, wholly intricate, without budging an inch; I couldn’t make one! A tree stands there, accumulating deadwood, mute and rigid as an obelisk, yet inwardly it seethes, it splits, sucks, and stretches; it heaves up tons and hurls them out into a green, fringed, fling. No one taps this free power, the dynamo in a tree pumps out ever more tree,…………………….. and it runs on rain and air! “

Another author whose comments I enjoy, John Cowper Powrys said: “We have no reason for denying to the world of plants a certain slow, dim, vague, large, leisurely, semi-consciousness.”
He may not be right, but I like his adjectives!

The more time I spend in company with God’s creation, both in nature and people, the more I am aware of the unseen processes and powerful forces at work within each.

Even more so, I see the power of God at work in the lives of my wife and children. There are obvious areas of public contribution that each makes to the world in which they live, but even more as I walk with them and listen to their hearts beat in their words, see the light in their eyes as they speak of issues deep within. These are powerful things to a Husband and Fathers heart, they are life-blood flowing within the very roots and trunk of life to leap from the leaves into praises to God for His work in creation today.

We have every reason to believe that there is a vibrant, powerful , intelligent, fully conscious God living His life through His children; daily pouring out His love and compassion to refresh a polluted and dying world with life that is abundant, full and free to all who will ‘breathe it in’!

I am blessed to have times like these to breate in God's blessings. Even if it seems to be in the simple experience of walking in God's woods with my family.