Flashes of Fall

This late-blooming perennial has many names - commonly, bugbane.

At the edge of my Uncle's J.'s pond last Saturday, and around the corner at a McDonalds drive-thru yesterday (where I sometimes treat myself to snack size McFlurries) ... there are flashes of fall everywhere, although trees dressed in dramatic yellows, bright oranges and autumn reds are still few and far between here in West Michigan.

Ornamental grasses are really strutting their stuff.

But even now as I am typing this, there is a large maple tree across the street that is glowing so brightly in the morning sunshine that it almost hurts.

A long time ago I heard someone describe the way beauty sometimes appears in the natural world in terms of God being a "flasher." (Now that meant something quite different when I was in college and we had a frequent male visitor who stood for a time by a tree just outside our college girl house!)

 But as sunsets appear briefly each day and new cloud patterns decorate the sky hourly and daily with all the uniqueness of a human fingerprint, God seemingly flashes us with (His) glory and we are for that brief moment in time, awed.

More of God's flashing fall beauty is sure to come ... I am waiting.