Sunday Afternoon

I'm sitting out tonight in the spring early evening, barbecuing a tri-tip. It's actually one of my favourite places around the house when the weather is cooperating. Why? Because I can snuggle up to the lavender bushes and watch the bees land, search for pollen, and take off again. It's Spanish Lavender (Lavandula stoechas) so there is no scent, but I do have the buzzing of the bees as a sound scent.

The afternoon is made doubly good due to the fact that this afternoon, Daibhidh Mor and myself bottled 46 bottles of Munich Helles, 23 bottles apiece of which are sitting in each of our garages, starting the final fermentation process. It's not just the making of beer - in fact, that is secondary to the comraderie and fellowship (dare we use the word koinonia) that we enjoy while we do it, as well as the sense of enjoying the fruits of one's labor (something which we seem, as a modern society, to be so far removed from the end result of what we do for a living).

It is moments like this that reminds me of the vastness and breadth and goodness of God. All that I see, hear, feel, touch, and taste were created by Him - indeed, even the ability to sense and process the information was provided by Him, even as the gift of watching Nighean Dhonn blow and then catch a bubble wanders by me, as Syrah the mighty fruitlessly chases the bees trying to catch them. Not only do we have salvation, we have all this too!

It would be a tragic event, I think, if one only had the universe to thank for all of this instead of a loving God.