Posted Thursday 1 March 2007
“This is the day that the Lord has made: we will rejoice and be glad in it.” (Psalm 118). “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive.” (Wordsworth)
I borrow a line from its original context in Wordsworth’s ‘The Prelude’ (Book 11: France) to accompany a familiar verse from Psalm 118 to express my reactions to the natural world around us in recent days at the beginning of February 2007 as Spring springs early this year, writes the Rev Canon Kenneth Stephen of Christ Church, Dalbeattie.
For a week now, in the half-light of the dawning day as I have been walking with our dog, Mungo, prior to contemplating the reality of world events in the columns of the newspapers, I have had the most vivid experience of the beauty and wonder of God’s creation. A progressively waning moon has hung over the granite hills to the west, bathing them with diffused light; twittering sparrows; the most mellifluous, variegated blackbird song from atop a tree and the cawing of rooks have been penetrating the crisp frosty stillness of the morning.
An hour or so later, walking down from the Rectory for morning prayers at the church, with the sun not yet fully risen, but tipping the trees of Dalbeattie Wood, there has been a further vista, with a clarity in the air such as I have not registered for many a day, the hills to the west etched against a deepening blue. Across the valley there are old quarry workings. When I first saw these, I thought that they would often be a blot on the landscape, despoiling the view. Far from it, for as the rising light strikes the rock face there can be differing hues from granite grey to blues and sometimes pinks and I am reminded of images of our natural world captured by Cezanne in his painting.
We are surrounded by the glory of God’s created world, too often, still, taking so much for granted. We have the supreme privilege of life in this world, and the awesome responsibility of the stewardship of God’s creation.
After my walk I read in the papers of the latest initiatives for the conservation of our planet, to combat global warming and its projected effects. I read also in those pages of myriad acts of inhumanity, the product of the selfishness, greed and vaunting ambition which we human beings, privileged with life in this world, engage in to despoil the ‘good earth’.
I look forward to the Lenten season with its calling to us to renewed penitence for the sinfulness and failings of fallen humanity, knowing that as we accept Jesus as our crucified and risen Lord, we place our faith and trust in the One sent by God, ‘not to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
Category: Thought for the Month
