EASTER MONDAY (Continued)

Let all the earth cry out to God with Joy!

Later in the afternoon, I took the kids to a nature center for a hike. On the drive home, one of them spotted an animal she was sure was a fox; red-brown with "black feet and black tips on the ears" Figuring it was a longshot, I drove back to see if we could spot it again. We looked and looked, and there, tumbling around the stone wall, was not one but six little foxes.

To be exact, it was one big and five very little pups. The big one ducked back into one of the holes in the stone wall, but the pups continued to tumble and frolic around—in and out of one of the many "doorways" in their house, looking for all the world like dead leaves tumbling in the wind. How appearances can be deceiving! We stayed and watched, turned around to get a better view and watched some more.

(Above: A small wildflower, named Dutchman's Breeches, because it looks like little trousers hanging on a clothesline—another Easter Monday surprise found along a woodland trail.)

How full of joy God's little universe is! I should mention that on the drive to the embroidery lecture earlier that day, we passed by something truly beautiful on the highway. It was iridescent reds and golds, splendor in the morning sunlight. I have never seen anything like it. I believe it was a dead wild turkey, as gorgeous as any peacock but decorated in rich golds instead blues and greens. How can something dead be so beautiful? I don't know, go ask the Redeemer.

But I do know that that dead turkey is as much a sign of hope as anything can be; because I remember that shortly after I entered school I began to learn all about smog, endangered animals, and world overpopulation; how man was killing all of nature. Wild turkeys were one of those things that we were destroying. And now I see them everywhere, plentiful enough to find along highways, and also brazenly strutting around in the backyard of the very school where I first learned to be depressed about my own existence.

It's taken me a long time to unpack that bitterness, and realize that the resurrection, The Resurrection, means I do not have to live in fear. There will always be a tomorrow, for wild turkeys, little foxes, and my beloved fellow man.

All text and photos © Copyright 2009 High Tor Media, Inc.