TAKE LOVING NOTICE

One of the great pleasures I have had all my life is to have been blessed, and continue to be blessed, to live in parts of the country where there are four seasons. Sometimes the winters are too long. Sometimes the summers are too dry or too wet or too hot. Sometimes the springs are too short or too cold. Sometimes the falls are not as pretty as I would like. But I get to experience and revel in the changing of the seasons, and not only to enjoy the changes but to live in and through them.

The anticipation of the seasonal changes is always important, especially when the season we are in has become just a little too much: too long, too cold, too hot, too whatever. What is more important than the anticipation is the living in the moment. Because even the moment, no matter how much we may dislike that moment because we are too tired of such moments, is worthwhile.

A longtime cyberfriend Molly Wolf wrote this a while back and it still holds true: "C.S. Lewis got it right: God wants us to live in the present, not the past or the future, because this present moment is as close as we're ever going to get in this life to what Eternity is like. The Market, the geese -- the river flooding, two kids intent on their sandbox play, a cat sleeping with her tail over her nose and her paws neatly bundled, two blanketed horses standing side-by-each in a field, an old woman dozing on the bus, two young lovers swinging hands and giggling, a drift of leave, a tangle of flowering maple: we are given such an endless number of God's creations to take loving notice of; and taking loving notice leaves us with such happiness and peace. What on earth keeps us from spending more time at this business of loving notice, when it costs absolutely nothing and gives us so much?"

What indeed! If the truth were told, however, we allow too much to enter our lives which will distract us from living in the moment and taking loving notice of all that surrounds us. Personally, I never really want to rush the seasons, yet I find myself rushing through the seasons. And in my hurry to get to who knows where, I miss so much of that which will add meaning and depth to my life right here and right if only I would stop. If only I would stop, not just to smell the roses but to take loving notice of them, even a long and loving notice.

To take loving notice means that I have to look beyond the beauty of the flower and the aroma that it gives off. It means that I have to come to the realization that the rose, this rose, was created by God because God loves me and gives it to me for my pleasure and enjoyment at this very moment in my life, a life that it often seems that I am rushing through.  To take loving notice means to know and see and understand the love that is at the basis of all that is good and Godly that surrounds us.

The season is changing. We are moving from fall to winter. Now is as good a time as any and perhaps better than most when we can make and take the time to take loving notice of all that surrounds us, the changing of the leaves, the nip in the air, the shortness of the days – what we seem to take for granted but really should revel in and give thanks for.