TIME OF BEAUTY, TIME OF SADNESS

My town is currently blessed with numerous trees wearing their springtime white blossoms, whose identifying names no one I've asked seems to know. Everyone says the trees are fruit trees but non-fruit-bearing. Just a thing of beauty, not for food. But oh, what beauty! I've seen two types of these trees, one of shorter height with limbs spreading outward, making a design of delicate lace, perhaps a bridal veil. The other type is taller in height and shoots straight up, showing more bark. This taller one is what reigns outside my windows. Probably a no-show appearance (at the windows only) today, for it is cloudy, I read a few hours ago, when I got up at 3:00, after only three hours of sleep. It's almost 7:00 now and I hope to get back in bed for a short while. 

Most people probably enjoy such picturesque scenery as these trees, but it takes a higher acumen to appreciate beauty presented in words. I will illustrate with one example and hope you will enjoy it. In the book I'm now reading (because it has only 151 pages) the first paragraph--nay, the very first sentence--is gorgeous metaphor. The author describes people leaving a theater in "three separate streams, each flow checked by unexpected eddies." If you don't know what an eddy is, then you will miss the thing of beauty here. But follow through the sequence: streams, flow, eddy. See how they complement each other. I've barely started reading this book but can predict more beautiful language like this first sentence.

Yesterday I took this small volume with me to my appointment at my doctor's office. I was so excited about this sentence that I read it aloud to her. She loved it. She told me about her book club, in which all members read the same book during the month and then discuss it at the next meeting. I suggested Unbroken for them to read, an idea I think she will act upon. 

There is much more beauty in the world, both in nature and in the printed word, but such magnificent highs are tempered by the events in the news, such as Hillary's debacle and accidents in the air. The latter makes one wonder: why would someone so unhappy living in this world today opt for hell instead, which would be worse yet, taking the lives of 150 people with him? The Christian religion, both Protestant and Catholic, teach such punishment for such crimes. If you are inclined to think "Perhaps that killer didn't believe in whatever the Bible says," you must realize God does not allow anyone to make up his own theology. God's laws stand forever and don't change. So much sadness in the world. But this is not a sermon.