Yesterday's storm lasted less than a half hour, and afterwards, I drove west across the lake to see the sky. Billowing clouds towered overhead, colored by the lingering light of the sun. It was like a glimpse of heaven, and I watched until the last golden cloud had faded overhead.
Driving home, up our driveway, my headlights caught a small fawn thrusting its head through the hog-wire fence, trying to get out of my path. Once in the garage, I walked back to check on the little thing. It hadn't moved far from where I saw it, but it seemed more relaxed, and its mother stood nearby on the other side of the fence. The fawn ran a short distance and then stood watching me. As I turned toward the house, the doe effortlessly bounded over the fence and joined her fawn.
As beautiful as it is here, we are continually reminded that we are not in paradise yet. The prophets in the Bible wrote of a new earth where:
The wolf will romp with the lamb,
the leopard sleep with the kid.
Calf and lion will eat from the same trough,
and a little child will tend them.
Cow and bear will graze the same pasture,
their calves and cubs grow up together,
and the lion eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child will crawl over rattlesnake dens,
the toddler stick his hand down the hole of a serpent.
Neither animal nor human will hurt or kill
on My holy mountain.
The whole earth will be brimming with knowing God-Alive,
a living knowledge of God ocean-deep, ocean-wide.
Isaiah 11:6-9 (MSG)
Isaiah 11:6-9 (MSG)
And then there's this treasure:
...how blessed you will be,
sowing your seed by every stream,
and letting your cattle and donkeys range free.
Isaiah 32:20 (NIV)
No more fences! But until them, we'll revel in this beauty, and worship Jesus, our Creator and King, and content ourselves with watching the little fawns growing strong and jumping the fences.
