Black Lace

     Helping gather maple sap one evening, I noticed once again the beauty of God’s creation.  The sight brought back memories of my Aunt Josie.  I don’t remember where we were or what we were doing exactly but I remember her words.
     “There was a tree line on a fencerow on the old home place where locusts grew different heights.  In the evening when the sun would set, I enjoyed so much the view of the dark, bare trees against the sky.  In my mind it looked like scalloped black lace, so elegant with all the little twigs and branches.  Sometimes there were rosy skies, sometimes hues of blue, maybe a touch of twilight with the moon and a few stars.  A thing of beauty that only God could create, more vibrant and real than any black lace!”
     Now when I see the winter trees, her words come to my mind.  I marvel at how God makes so much beauty out of the bare.  God can make beautiful the bare and ugly in my life too. Isaiah 61:3 says “To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, that they might be called the trees of righteousness the planting of the Lord.”