Sunshine Coast, BC – Page 11

Home Again

Posted on April 30, 2014April 29, 2017 by lindaskelton

Home again.

[I snapped this shot in memory of “Chase Me”. We sold her last year to a gung-ho sailor who outfitted her for racing. She sank in this strait just a few weeks back, during a wild and windy race… All aboard were rescued, thankfully. But she lives on only in our happy memories…So strange still to think of her lying at the bottom of the ocean with her home made cushions and fresh new paint and sails…]

But where was I?!…. Yes! I’m safely home again, just in time to see the wild currants bloom…

…and of course the homey dandelions too, which carry on in spite of Jim’s rigorous elimination campaign…

Then there are these tiny daisies which I introduced to the lawn for fun, and have not yet regretted…

The garden lies fallow, turned and expectant

while the early risers exult in springtime sun!

The lupine bursts forth.

And the kale runs to seed welcoming bees to my garden…

While the wallflowers do what wallflowers do best—

add beauty to the drab wall of the house!

The bushy Scouler’s willow in the swampy outback literally hums with bees on their mission to get making honey.

Meanwhile, blushing quietly, the most beautiful of blooms begin to open on the apple tree,

while at her feet the bluebells ring.

It’s good to be home.

–LS

I will walk before the LORD in the land of the living. Ps.116:9

Daffodils

Posted on April 10, 2014April 29, 2017 by lindaskelton

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

But wait—these daffodils were in a parking lot, and I wasn’t wandering, I was trotting about my Tuesday business in town.

So they were all the more delightful for the pause they afforded me in the middle of activity…

I stopped to capture them in digital media for safe-keeping, an option Wordsworth evidently did not have…

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed–and gazed–but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

–William Wordsworth

But I am taken with his poem and with daffodils–how could I not be?!

–LS

Wishing you many bright and hopeful signs of new life within and without.

“…for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure”. Phil.2:13

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)

I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.