The Morning Praise

As I was fixing the morning coffee, I looked out the kitchen window and was surprised by the sight of a flock of seven or eight turkeys strutting across the hay field.  Since it was a first sighting this year, it was a moment filled with excitement.  It was one of those moments which Annie Dillard describes in one of her books as "now you see it, now you don't."  Hardly had I gotten to the front porch for a better view and they disappeared into the heavy brush down by the branch.   In these years here on the farm I have learned that there are many such moments to experience.  

There is a big and getting old silver fox squirrel who is eating my pecans, but I still relish every moment he graces me with a sighting.  There are sounds like owls hooting at night and circling hawks shrieking in the sunlight.  I have learned that the dirt is full of life and dormant trees will come back to life again.  The most amazing part of these years living here immersed in the creation is the way God shows up.  Surely, He is with us all the time.  He expresses His desire to be in our presence more than even the most devout express a desire to be in His presence. To speak of Him showing us is to say there are those moments when His voice speaks through the silence which belongs to Him to say a Word that resonates in my heart as His Word.  

In the midst of any day, there are signs of His presence all around.  Sometimes that moment of presence comes through a shining forth of the Creation.  Sometimes it does so through the most ordinary things which are seen and taken for granted.  Sometimes this moment of presence arrives through the presence of someone who stands along beside me and then there are also those moments of being reminded of His presence while watching turkeys on their morning stroll, or a fox squirrel scampering up the tree for pecans that are mine, but also his.  "When morning gilds the skies my heart awakening cries: May Jesus Christ be praised!"