O LORD, our Lord, How excellent is Your name in all the earth, Who have set Your glory above the heavens! Psalm 8:1

It’s a beautiful morning! The temperature is cool and the air crisp as new apples. I decided to go for a walk with my dog before I get involved in house or garden chores. This summer my mornings have slipped away far too quickly. Before I know it, it is afternoon, the temperature has climbed into the 80’s and it’s too hot to do much outside. While my dog is ever ready to run and play, my romping energy fades by supper time. When I complained to my doctor about the fact that I get more tired easily, he reminded me, not so tactfully, to check out my birth certificate!

I walked one of the loops in our subdivision, letting the dog sniff the shrubs and weeds along the road to do his business. The morning light played itself into countless patterns of shadow and light through the trees. Clouds pillowed themselves on the sky’s bed and diffused the sun’s usual high summer intensity. I paid more attention to the world I walked through. The vibrant greenery of spring growth is gone, but in its place dried weeds, golden brown as wheat, cover the hillsides. They sway gracefully in invisible breezes or perhaps they’re brushed by Someone’s feet passing through. I saw large swaths of still green grasses matted down like beds, perhaps for the deer to rest on during the night. Waxy snowberries grow in thickets. Wild roses still bear bright pink flowers. Some of the underbrush has turned orange and yellow as if Jack Frost has been here with his boxes of autumn paint to move us into the coming season. Soon the sumac and mountain ash will display themselves in brilliant colors.

I’ve never noticed the apple tree growing in one of my neighbor’s yards. It is tall, looks healthy and is filling in with small yellow apples. I am surprised that a fruit tree would do well given this altitude and mountain terrain and for some reason, its incongruity in the surrounding pine forest gladdens my heart. I shall look for other surprises whenever I walk, from the tiniest seed heads circling in perfect symmetry to the endless, vast and changing sky.

The writer Annie Dillard describes how to sharpen one’s observations by seeing through a “four inch square”, that is by focusing into a very small space and paying close attention to the details therein. Think about making a four inch square with your fingers over a sunflower or your child’s face. What marvels are then revealed! What if you enclosed a piece of the sky above between your hands? What might you then see and know? I’ve used that technique many times in the past, especially when I am dry, struggling to write anything at all. Lately, this has been the case. I’ve been too busy, busy, busy to write, but truthfully, I’ve not allowed myself to pay attention to those things which God uses to inspire me , gladden my heart and reveal mysteries.

I returned home with this thought. God created this amazingly beautiful planet for us. How many four inch squares can we frame to describe what is in just the limited view all around us? Is even “infinity” a large enough number concept? (And of course, there is all the rest of the world.) Such fullness boggles the mind. Such vast complexities lead me in faith to believe that,

When I behold Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You set in place—what is man that You are mindful of him, or the son of man that You care for him? Psalm 8:3-4