I Can See Clearly Now....

November is coming early?  This past Friday morning

Does anyone else know that oldies tune with the line, "I can see clearly now the rain is gone"?   Not to suggest that music lyrics make no sense sometimes (because we all know that is just a preposterous suggestion!) but sometimes things are not as visible when everything is all sunshine and blue sky.  Those vibrant colors above were not half so noticeable until they were soaked in rain with dark clouds overhead! 

Well to illustrate this point I am pairing some recent photos with some old photos to go with an awesome excerpt from Spurgeon.   Sometimes you see things more clearly in the drear, and you always see light better in darkness.  But although I may not agree with those old song lyrics, I will play the DJ and send this one out to a few of my peeps who I think could use some encouragement on a bleak October day.  Ya'll know who you are! ;-)

Starry night 2 weeks ago

By C.H. Spurgeon:

Night seems to be the great friend of the stars: they must be all unseen by eyes of men, were they not set in the foil of darkness. It is even so with winter. We might feel sad, that all the flowers of summer must die, and all the fruits of autumn must be gathered into their store-house, that every tree must be stripped. and that all the fields must lose their fair flowers. 

 

But were it not for winter we should never see the glistening crystals of the snow; we should never behold the beauteous festoons of the icicles that hang from the eaves. Much of God's marvellous miracles of hoar frost must have been hidden from us, if it had not been for the cold chill of winter, which, when it robs us of one beauty, gives us another,—when it takes away the emerald of verdure, it gives us the diamond of ice—when it casts from us the bright rubies of the flowers, it gives us the fair white ermine of snow.

 

We do not love nights, but we do love stars; we do not love weakness, but we do bless God for the promise that is to sustain us in our weakness, we do not admire winter, but we do admire the glittering snow; we must shudder at our own trembling weakness, but we still do bless God that we are weak because it makes room for the display of his own invincible strength in fulfilling such a promise as this.

A cardinal is always seen best in a dreary landscape!

And anyone not convinced that at the end of every storm there is a smile....please know that behind that snow covered scarf that boy is grinning from ear to ear!