A few years ago, a man offered me a bunch of freshly picked yellow flowers, dirt still clinging to the roots of the long stalks. He was shy but his eyes held anticipation.
"They're beautiful. Thank you. What are they?" I accepted the stems and touched the petals of the yellow flowers with the dark middle, noting how they turned down instead of up.
"They're Brown-Eyed Susans, and they grow on my land." The man smiled as he gazed into my doe eyes, huge and luminous, and as dark as the middle of the flowers that carried both its description and my name. My very own personalised flowers.
Today, that man is personalised too. He’s my husband.
A few days ago it was Valentine’s. The card from my husband read, “This year I decided to get you the moon, stars, and Venus.” (Can you guess what that was?)
Since moving to the acreage three years ago, I’ve become fascinated with the sky. The absence of artificial light (save for the vehicles on the highway that runs 135 metres south of our home), makes our place a star gazer’s paradise. The quietude and vastness of the open prairie sky propels one to fall on their faces in awe (but the snow forbids that kind of reverence).
The wonder of our Creator beckons from every angle. Planets. Constellations. Shooting stars. Meteors and showers. Clusters. Satellites. Moon.
We’ve seen the sky shows. We’re learning new names and identification every night.
God of wonders. God of the galaxy. God who called everything into being.
Holy, holy God.
He’s the God of love. He set love in motion in Eden. A man and a woman in expansive nature abundant with flowers, trees, water, birds and everything breathtaking. So too I’m carefree on expanses, in nature, with a man who picks me flowers, a man born in a village called Eden.
But Eden was only the beginning of love. For out of it would come the need for a baby to be born, for that baby to grow to a man, for that man to die for the sins of Eden. This kind of love, this kind of grace, is not of flesh. This kind of love is the long-suffering heart of the Originator of Love. For God so loved that He gave Jesus to redeem a man and woman in Eden. And anyone who would call on Him.
When I look at the moon and stars and Venus, the love rolls into one for the man and God and the shiny points of the galaxy. Then it is Valentine’s Day all over again. All year round.
SUSAN HARRIS is a hopeless romantic who writes non-fiction. Visit her website at www.susanharris.ca . She would love if you would subscribe to her bi-monthly newsletter and YouTube channel HERE .
2 comments:
It's abundantly clear, dear 'brown-eyed' Susan - you ARE a "hopeless romantic"! :)
You had me right there, under your rural Saskatchewan night-sky with raised gaze, marvelling at the vastness and glory of the Creator's handiwork. Thank you for sharing it. ~~+~~
Thank you Peter. It is soooooo good to see you here. Around 2:00 a.m. the sky was a burst of "ooooh". It is incredible in early morning. There were two multi-coloured lights/stars or whatever they were, that keep going higher and higher into the sky. They were almost as big as Venus but I'm not sure what it was. I'm going to put the telescope in the bedroom tonight and do some sleuthing. Have a nice day, Peter.
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