Beauty & Brokeness

Just returned from the land of sunshine and little lizards. Sarasota, Florida. Little scurrying lizards are everywhere. Being a Pennsylvania boy, something is quite unnatural to me to be sporting shorts and a tee-shirt in late December, At night, no less--as well as seeing lizards skirt about.

It feels like a different planet. Florida is as flat as a sizzling on the skillet pancake and the roads are linear and square.

One feature of Florida that I do quite enjoy is the ability to run without layers of clothing and gloves in "winter." Here in the Northeast, it takes a double-commitment to run in the winter months. Hard enough to get motivated and that much harder when it is freezing cold.  I almost felt like a nudist streaking about scantily-clad on my 8 mile trek to the beach and back, made two miles longer by my inability to find a public access path to the ocean. Those condos interlock like Lego's and keep the non-1% pieces people out.

After one of my exercise routines, I hit the hot tub in my mom's back yard and cracked a beer. I peered beyond the screened in porch that keeps the tropical bugs out and saw these orange leaves on a palm tree (I think it was a palm tree). I wondered if this was a "Fall in Florida" type of deal. I left the soothing waters of the hot tub and walked out back to examine why the leaves were orange. I discovered that the branch had snapped from the tree trunk and was in the process of dying.

I have become more inquisitive of late. I am developing a tendency to try and look deeper into things and not ask only what but why.

There was a poignant beauty in this burst of color. Rather than a collapsing into decay quietly, the leaves go out boldly and blazing. It made me sad yet also happy. God has given the leaves an opportunity for a final expression of beauty. We often view God through various lenses familiar to us. Lawgiver, Father, King, etc. Yet, leaves like this remind me that God is also an Artist.