This Is My Father's World

Yesterday I did one of my favorite things with my favorite person: we took a foliage drive through the Ozark and Boston Mountains in NW Arkansas. It was our “welcome home” gift to ourselves.

We left home driving west on I-40, and when we reached Arkansas Hwy 23 (known as the Pig Trail because it used to be the preferred way to travel from Little Rock to Fayetteville for Razorback football and basketball), we turned north.

I grew up in west Texas, where autumn foliage was something we read about in geography textbooks. We had a lot of Mesquite trees (most were just big bushes) that didn’t turn colors in the fall. The leaves just fell off. And on the few scrub oak and other hardwood trees out there the leaves just turned brown before they fell off. The first real color I saw was in Quantico, Virginia when I was in Marine Officer Candidate School when I was 26 years old.

It was the same way with mountains. I still remember the first time I saw real mountains: it was on a trip into New Mexico with my uncle’s family when I was nine. I guess that dust-bowl-flatland environment of my younger years is what’s behind the awe I experience in the mountains today. I loved living in northwest Arkansas, and still love driving through that area. I love to vacation in the Rockies; and I grieve at the end as I watch the mountains fade in the rear-view mirror.

So yesterday’s trek with my spouse was very special.

And people were talking about the “polar vortex” as the first wave of frigid air moved into the area. The season is changing—just like it does every year about this time. The earth wobbles on its axis and the northern hemisphere leans away from the sun and we drag out our lawn rakes and leaf blowers—every year about this time.

Will Rogers said, “If you don’t like the weather here (Oklahoma), just wait a minute.” Most states have adopted that axiom as if they originated it. The truth is that it’s a universal phenomenon.

And isn’t that wonderful?

Order. Symmetry. Rhythm. Dependability. All these are attributes of a system that reflects the faithfulness of its creator. “For everything there is a season,” wrote The Preacher (Ecclesiastes 3:1). And he concludes, “(God) has made everything beautiful in its time” (vs. 11).

Brilliant ambers, yellows, oranges and reds of every tint lined the hills and dells of the Mulberry River Valley, and the bluebird sky provided the perfect backdrop. The leaves will fall soon, and their decay will enrich the soil and nourish the very trees from which they fall.

Every year about this time.

I think I feel a “Doxology” coming on!

And that’s the way I see it through the flawed glass that is my world view.

Together in the Walk,

Jim