Tag: drop

Find a quiet rain.  Then a green spruce tree.  You will notice that nearly every needle has been decorated with a tiny raindrop ornament.  Look closely inside the drop and there you are. In color. Upside down. Raindrops have been collecting snapshots since objects and people were placed, to their surprise, here and there on earth.

…even if we are only on display for a moment in a water drop as it clings to a pine needle, it is expected that we be on our best behavior, hair combed, jacket buttoned, no vulgar language.  Smiling is not necessary, but a pleasant attitude is helpful, and would be, I think, appreciated.
~Tom Hennen from “Outdoor Photos”

… We are, as we have always been, dangerous creatures, the enemies of our own happiness. But the only help we have ever found for this, the only melioration, is in mutual reverence.

God’s grace comes to us unmerited, the theologians say. But the grace we could extend to one another we consider it best to withhold in very many cases, presumptively, or in the absence of what we consider true or sufficient merit (we being more particular than God), or because few gracious acts, if they really deserve the name, would stand up to a cost-benefit analysis. 

This is not the consequence of a new atheism, or a systemic materialism that afflicts our age more than others. It is good old human meanness, which finds its terms and pretexts in every age. The best argument against human grandeur is the meagerness of our response to it, paradoxically enough.

And yet, the beautiful persists, and so do eloquence and depth of thought, and they belong to all of us because they are the most pregnant evidence we can have of what is possible in us.
~ Marilynne Robinson from “What Are We Doing Here?”

Grace rains down on us, often as a gentle shower, but sometimes in a torrential downpour.

I prefer quiet drizzle, clinging as droplets which reflect me as an earth-bound image of God.

Often, when I look at my upside-down image in a hanging drop, I feel downright unimpressive, even grouchy about getting wet. There I am, captured in a transparent selfie, about to fall to the ground and disappear forever.

Yet there are times when my image actually looks and feels presentable – maybe even a little beautiful – inside that drop of grace water.

God creates us pregnant with possibility. It is up to me to water the world with the love He bestows as unmerited grace. He can be so gentle and quiet, but I must be prepared for the deluge that sweeps me off my feet.