As most of you know this has been a tough time for me and my family, yesterday we laid my father to rest, and a month ago it was my mother.
This morning for the 1st time in several days the sun is shining across snow covered fields and shortly after it came up there was a sun pillar made up of suspended ice crystals and then for a few brief moments there was a cross in the sky, formed by the interaction of floating crystals and the sun. There to the South East was the cross and to the South the hill where my folks are awaiting His return. What comfort.
Nature is where God has always spoken to me, even when I wasn't wanting to be spoken to. It's where I have found comfort and peace when the world was falling apart. It is where I've been able to commune with God, see His work and shake off the heavy yoke of everyday like.
The day after my father died I shared the following with a Yahoo hiking group I'm on. Most on this group are not Christian BTW.
Mourning walk.
This morning I went for my morning walk, out across the Sherwin homestead that I call home. I walked across rolling fields that my father and his family farmed behind horses, guiding them around the white pine stumps left there by lumberjacks years before. The fields where he and his siblings would hoe, row after row of potatoes, corn or pickles (cucumbers) under a hot summer sun.
Then I went into the woods where I followed deer tracks and canine tracks, both little (fox?) and large (coyotes?) Those are the woods where my family has been cutting fire wood, taking walks, hunting and playing in since 1921.
This morning the fields were covered with wet snow and above the snow a fog. A dreary day here in Central Michigan that matched the mood of my heart, for you see this really was a mourning walk. Yesterday, a month and a day after the passing of my mother, my father, age 92 and 11 months, breathed his last breath as I held his hand, just as I held it years ago as he took me for walks across these fields and into these woods and on mountain trails and sandy shores giving me a great love for nature and the out of doors. A sad time indeed, but as a Christian I have this hope....
Thanks for letting me share,
Richard Sherwin
