Just a Bunch of Weeds

With the slightly cooler, more overcast weather, Dusty’s enthusiasm for walks has returned somewhat. So this morning we headed out to our old haunt and got part way round before she gave me that long searching look that I translate as ‘We’ve done this so many times before, what’s the point?’ But just at that point, I was looking across the marshy wasteland separating one stand of trees from another and thought, with some surprise, how beautiful it is today!

The reeds throw out a wide selection of shades of green, yellow, and brown, which provide a perfect back drop for the purple thistles and white flowers which poke up here and there. 

It’s just a bunch of weeds. The ground is unfit for cultivation or grazing. It provides the arterial network of paths for deer, rabbits, foxes and badgers – and probably some other animals – which leads them from one wooded area to another. Other than that, it’s pretty uninteresting.

Until today, when I paused in my conversation with Dusty and really looked at that expanse of bog. I should have had a camera to take a picture and insert it here, but I’m not as technologically advanced as some two-year-olds and my mobile phone is just that – a mobile phone. Oh, it’ll take a picture, but then I don’t know how to get it from the phone to the internet. I understand my Ipad, but it’s a bit big to accompany me on our daily walks.

Anyway, beauty in the wasteland. Shades of colour in an area I assumed remained monochrome. Texture, variety, diversity. And that’s just the plants! How many beautiful bugs proliferate in there? (I don’t think I’ll ever have an answer to that because bugs are not my thing...)

The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it. 

The infinitely creative imagination of the Almighty God has wrought a world more varied and complex and lovely than we deserve. 

But then, his grace is more than we deserve, and everything good is ours because of his grace and mercy to us. 

I am forever grateful. And now I’m going outside to enjoy it some more.