Look at the beauty of the sunrise this morning.
I have often meditated on winter trees, how I wouldn’t be able to see the beauty of this sunrise unless the trees were completely stripped of their leaves. God is seen so much more clearly through us the more we are stripped of what impedes His Son.
Do you remember the first time you ever picked up a kaleidoscope and looked through it, the sheer delight you experienced? Here’s St. Thérèse’s thoughts on her experience:
This toy . . . intrigued me, and for a long time I kept wondering just what could produce so delightful a phenomenon. One day a careful examination revealed that the unusual effect was merely the result of a combination of tiny scraps of paper and wool scattered about inside. When on further scrutiny I discovered three looking-glasses inside the tube, the puzzle was solved. And this simple toy became for me the image of a great mystery . . .. So long as our actions, even the most trivial, remain within love’s kaleidoscope, the Blessed Trinity (which the three converging glasses represent) imparts to them a marvelous brightness and beauty . . . . The eye-piece of the spy-glass symbolizes the good God, who looking from the outside (but through Himself, as it were) into the kaleidoscope finds everything quite beautiful, even our miserable straws of effort and our most insignificant actions.
God, give us the ability to see ourselves–and others–as you see us.
Try this link for fun! And, if you want to try making your own, go here!
A beautiful snow last night and this morning a bird singing outside my window. This brings to mind a poem by Jessica Powers about a chickadee in a snow storm. There is always something to be learned from God’s creatures if we just take the time to look and ask Him to help us to really see.
Look at the Chickadee
I take my lesson from the chickadee
who in the storm
receives a special fire to keep him warm,
who in the dearth of a December day
can make the seed of a dead weed his stay,
so simple and so small,
and yet the hardiest hunter of them all.The world is winter now and I who go
loving no venture half so much as snow,
in this white blinding desert have been sent
a most concise and charming argument.
To those who seek to flout austerity,
who have a doubt of God’s solicitude
for even the most trivial of His brood,
to those whose minds are chilled with misery
I have this brief audacious word to say:
look at the chickadee,
that small perennial singer of the earth,
who makes the week of a December day
the pivot of his mirth.~Jessica Powers
Witnesses to Hope 