The Touch

 I just finished reading Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. It's a story that so startlingly mirrors what we are heading into today, that it makes you sit back and think. the similarities to the voice in the seashell bud in the ear, the walls that bring the "family" into the living room via screens with a scripted story people interact in. It brought to mind bluetooth ear buds, smartphones and Facebook with the hours we can get lost in chatting with people about things, but we don't really "do" anything.

The part that caught my eye the most was toward the end of the book where the story reads, "Everyone must leave something in the room or left behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there. It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime."

I love the gardener analogy so I've added here, a couple of photos I took with my dumb phone last night while out for a walk.  The hillsides here are covered with lupine and daisies and such in with wild abandon. The Creator must have delighted in tossing out the seeds of change this once naked earth needed to blossom and become the beautiful orb it now is. We see his hand in all the world around us, orderly in life cycles, yet given to asymmetric design.

More than that though, in the creative nature of the earth, is the living to touch the life of someone each day.

Each Life That Touches Ours for Good

 Each life that touches ours for good
Reflects thine own great mercy, Lord;
Thou sendest blessings from above
Thru words and deeds of those who love.

 What greater gift dost thou bestow,
What greater goodness can we know
Than Christlike friends, whose gentle ways
Strengthen our faith, enrich our days.

When such a friend from us departs,
We hold forever in our hearts
A sweet and hallowed memory,
Bringing us nearer, Lord, to thee.

 For worthy friends whose lives proclaim
Devotion to the Savior's name,
Who bless our days with peace and love,
We praise thy goodness, Lord, above.

 Karen Lynn Davidson

Today I hope to be more the gardener than the lawn cutter, the friend, the neighbor I should be.