March 2014 – Skelton Sketches

Skirting Scout—Spring musings

Posted on March 27, 2014April 29, 2017 by lindaskelton

It was the first day of spring. Who could resist getting out to feel the sunshine?! So I did a sunny circumvention of Scout’s faces…

And sat a while in the warmth reading and ruminating on what it means to grow in grace…

And I had a happy tromp around the mountain…

…and back home again.

Meanwhile next door a new owner has taken up residence and is working to establish dominion over decrepit outbuildings, rambling thorns and a jumble of hodge-podge. First comes the demolition, then the clearing and beautifying, as the old way of life on that property gives way to the new…

Perhaps this is not so unlike what it means to grow in grace. A new Owner has taken up residence and is making all things new—out with old decrepit life patterns that serve no purpose, in with the beauty of His holiness… It’s all part of a process that the new Master superintends, graciously.

–LS

And a fresh bit of wording from The Message New Testament:

There has never been the slightest doubt in my mind that the God who started this great work in you would keep at it and bring it to a flourishing finish on the very day Christ Jesus appears. (Phil.1:6)

“Let me put this question to you: How did your new life begin? Was it by working your heads off to please God? Or was it by responding to God’s Message to you? Are you going to continue this craziness? For only crazy people would think they could complete by their own efforts what was begun by God. If you weren’t smart enough or strong enough to begin it, how do you suppose you could perfect it? Did you go through this whole painful learning process for nothing?

Does the God who lavishly provides you with his own presence, his Holy Spirit, working things in your lives you could never do for yourselves, does he do these things because of your strenuous moral striving or because you trust him to do them in you? Don’t these things happen among you just as they happened with Abraham? He believed God, and that act of belief was turned into a life that was right with God.” (from Galatians 3)

Ferry Life…

Posted on March 20, 2014April 29, 2017 by lindaskelton

We had a quick trip over to Vancouver Island this weekend to catch up with our daughter.

Didn’t seem noteworthy in pictures. We are so used to taking ferries whenever we go anywhere…

Then again, maybe our ‘normal’ is not your normal, so I snapped a few pictures…

Dock upgrades and changes to ferry schedules and routing have been BIG small town news of late. But everything is now returned to order on our routes…well, almost everything. This ferry is ‘out of place’ on this route actually. But there are new ‘dolphins’, new ramps, wider lanes for loading and off-loading and… well, you get the idea. Big small town news.

After a beautiful hour and a half of sunny sailing (spent out on the deck dozing in the sunshine)

we’re almost home!

Time to return to our vehicle for off-loading.

And that’s it. Our ‘normal’ mode of travel. Try it, you’ll like it—well, except for the price tag. Such is ferry life…

–LS

The trudge

Posted on March 13, 2014April 28, 2017 by lindaskelton

I was tired of walking—really, trudging is what it had become.

I guess I was just tired…Sunday afternoons are made for resting aren’t they? The sun had lured me out the door but my energy was flagging…a cold coming on perhaps?

So I turned off the beaten track and settled myself on a little rise amongst the barren poplars…overlooking the sea just beyond–

And I pulled out my new book of Robert Frost’s poems (on my Kindle, of course)…and I just sat there warmed by sunshine, lulled by a trickle of water close by, and browsed among neatly laid lines of words for awhile, and read—of roses, and hayfields, of woods, and of butterflies, sorrow and love. I’ve always like Frost’s way of putting things.

And I sat silent for awhile, wordless and content to have found a spot to soak in sun.

Eventually, treading my way home, I turned aside at the little abandoned quarry—a pocket of water and silence. Louie used to stop here for a drink on our walks. It’s been a long while.

I was wishing I were home already. Tired of walking. Tired of old tired roads.

A little further along I saw a track uphill I had never noticed before. Who can resist a new trail to an unknown destination?

Curiosity overcame tired legs and up we went…

It was just a short climb to a tabletop of stone with a panoramic view. So that’s how you get here! I’d always seen this lone fir on its rocky promontory from the highway and wondered…

Now I know!

Sweet surprise for an afternoon’s trudge.

–LS

Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun.” Eccl 11:7 KJV

P.S. If you enjoy Robert Frost’s poetry, don’t miss his first anthology, A Boy’s Will, available free online at BooksShouldBeFree.com