One of the joys “running around and preaching,” is to get outside the 270-255 concrete circle.  I find that when weeks and even months go by without breaking outside the encompassing concrete boundary that I lose contact with what is happening in the nearby countryside.

Just off 255 at New Poag Rd is an area with an abundance of white blooming trees.  It isn’t that we don’t have blooming trees on our street, we do, pear, cherry, magnolia, red bud, dogwood, and Lilac.  But to pass a woods dotted with blooming dogwoods and red buds holds a wonder all its own.  In the fields the winter wheat is growing green, corn will soon be sprouting, cattle and horses are plentiful in the pastures.  That is the scene Becky and I have experienced on our way up to Bunker Hill this spring.  And this coming Sunday we will be traveling to Conant/Pinckneyville.  I look forward to the quiet wonders we will behold along the way.

On the third day of creation God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, upon the earth.” And it was so.

Pius Parsch writes, “Nature is a holy symbol.  It is a picture – book given by God to his children in which they may see his beauty and his love; a picture-book which tells of another world which now at Easter is likewise celebrating resurrection, the world of supernatural life within us.

Spring with its transformation of hill and meadow is, accordingly, a great symbol of an event in sacred history and of an event now taking place in the church.  Springtime is nature executing her Easter liturgy.”

The second stanza of Thomas Mentzer’s hymn “O that I had a thousand voices” is fitting for Easter,

You forest leaves so green and tender

That dance for joy in summer air,

You meadow grasses bright and slender,

You flow’rs so fragrant and so fair,

You live to show God’s praise alone.

Join me to make his glory known.