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Once upon a time, not so very long ago, I lived in a small farmhouse with windows facing this view. The rising sun came up across the river valley to the left of the hill. The setting sun lingered over it with the warmth of a good night kiss. The woods beyond the hill were deep and old. The wildlife on our side was fed well and found fresh water in the clear creek that meandered across the foot of the hill on its way northward toward the White River. Deer fed in the woody ravines that cut into the hillside, turkeys roosted in the trees, and healthy cows grazed on the rich pasture grasses closer to the house.

At dusk we occasionally sat out back with binoculars and watched turkeys feed and coyote families gambol on the lower hillside. Sometimes, as dusk settled and we couldn’t see clearly (and most often when children were visiting) my husband would howl at the coyotes and the coyotes would howl back at him.

Early every summer a friend and I would drive our farm utility vehicle up the hill—very carefully—for new washouts were common in the Indiana karst. We’d scan the bushes along the tree line and stopped to pick basketfuls of large sweetly juicy wild blackberries growing along the edges of the woods.

A friend helped us put a cross on top of that hill. It was big—maybe 15 foot high or more. He strung it with the brightest dusk to dawn solar powered lights he could find at the local store. Oh my, how my husband loved to look out at that cross shining across the country darkness. Looking up that way, the moon, stars and cross were the only lights we could see. It shone so brightly that motorists crossing the bridge over the White River about five miles away could see it—even on rainy nights. We heard that a local gentleman whose wife had been wanting him to go to church for decades drove across that bridge one night and was so taken by the sight that he went to church with his wife the very next Sunday.

The cross eventually came down; the farm was sold. But the light of Jesus who died upon a cross shines on and on and on . . . . 

In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. John 1:4

There was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man. John 1:9

Then Jesus again spoke to them, saying, “I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.” John 8:12

I have come as Light into the world, so that everyone who believes in Me will not remain in darkness. John 12:46

For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. 2 Corinthians 4:6

 

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• Trees