Lessons for Life

Have you ever noticed what a fabulous blogger you can be in the middle of the night?  How the words just flow, eloquent, to the point, whole paragraphs evolving effortlessly?  And have you ever sat at your computer, come the cold light of day, stymied by the blank screen, with complete and utter writer's block,  the words lacking punch, the sentences contrived and stilted?  Ah well, pictures help...sometimes.

Today it's about life lessons learned from Nature.

30 degrees Celsius (86 F. for those who want to convert) vanished in a flash as Mother Nature turned her capricious mood back to winter.  3 degrees Celsius (37 F.) overnight.  Close the windows.  Leave the newly stretched screen in the garage.  Bring in the pansy pots.  Wear your down coat to church.  Cold is bad enough, but when it comes with 90 mph winds, thunder and lightning for 28 hours !! it's another thing altogether.  Okay, Mother Nature, what got your goose?

Our neighborhood is resplendent with hardwood trees--a veritable forest.  Because they were newly in leaf, tenderly green and delicious-looking, they were ravaged by the cutting edge of the gale. 

Some trees heavily laden with their fresh green mantles were no match for the whip lashing  they received.  We woke to debris littering our yards, driveways and sidewalks.    Leaves, limbs and branches and whole trees downed.  The trees that split in two, broke or just plain fell over were diseased at their cores. 

They were like whitewashed tombs that gleam in the sun, beautiful on the outside, but on the inside, full of dead bones and rotting, stinking decay.

The heart's disease, left long enough, permeates completely to the roots.

Sick, compromised, fallen, gone forever.

But not without inflicting pain on innocent bystanders.

A Japanese Maple now scared and misshapen for the rest of its life because it was caught up in the whirlwind of some other's fallout.

Blockages and no-go zones have been created.  Life has been disrupted. 

In the day to day of living, there comes a time to examine our hearts.  Is there something impure there?  Something that is unhealthy?  Some thing that should be dealt with sooner than later?  As people, we so often focus on the outward appearance, giving no thought to what lies beneath the surface.  Not until there is a cataclysmic event do we register a problem...too late.  Pain, destruction, loss. Others get hurt, sometimes irreparably. 

Create within me a pure heart, O Lord.  Psalm 51

God will put a new spirit within us.  He will take the heart of stone out of us and give us a new heart of flesh so that we may walk in His statutes and keep His commandments.  We will be His people and He will be our God.  Ezek. 11:19