Categories: orthodox-life
Date: 26 September 2004 00:03:03
I went on a bushwalk yesterday with four other city slickers from church. We walked down to the base of the breathtaking Wentworth Falls. Those who have done this walk will remember the rather steep sandstone and metal steps provided to get down to the base as quickly as possible: my legs are not thanking me today. I have never been all the way to the bottom before (there are a few "levels" for these falls), and it was well worth the trip. We had a picnic lunch on a sandy shore, surrounded by trees on three sides and the last stage of the waterfall on the other -- pure beauty, peace and tranquility.
We stopped on the way down to say the Prayers of the Third Hour (~ 9am), which includes Psalm 25 and the wonderful prayer, "O Lord, you sent down Your Most Holy Spirit upon Your apostles at the Third Hour. Take Him not from us, O Good One, but renew Him in us who pray to you." Another prayer was offered on the way up -- it did give me more strength to tackle those steps!
What struck me most was the pure beauty of the creation around us, and the sure belief of God's delighting in it as we were. The words of Psalm 104 continually played through my mind: "You who laid the foundations of the earth", "[The waters] went up over the mountains; They went down into the valleys, To the place which You founded for them", "May the glory of the LORD endure forever; May the LORD rejoice in His works". How truly blessed we are.
Watching the water skip and dance over the rocks had me mesmerised. It may have been "monotonous", but as G.K. Chesterton said in Orthodoxy:
For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore.