Hidey-Ho, Fun Foto Challengers! This week’s foto prompt from environs west of me and from the land of Cee is FOUND IN NATURE. This year I am taking a bit of a different tac with all  my blog prompts. I have decided to take the prompts and give them new names so as to speak to the audience about what the prompts really say to me as an individual.

I was listening to the radio this morning and the announcer was telling her listeners that the average temperature here in the U.S. is twenty-five degrees colder than normal. It got me thinking that the world is getting colder not just physically but in other ways more spiritual. Still no matter how cold the air (physical or spiritual) around us gets, if we look hard enough we can always find hope.

Black Oaks, Immaculate Heart Of Mary Church, Winchendon MA

“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.” 
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

Rejoicing In the Cold

“Hope
Smiles from the threshold of the year to come, 
Whispering ‘it will be happier’…” 
― Alfred Tennyson

Forest of Ingleside, Winchendon MA

“Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be…” 
― William Wordsworth

I hope you enjoyed the photos from nature I found. I pray that one of these quotes filled you with a renewed hope in the world. Remember it’s not what is happening just now but what we hope is to come that counts. Nothing is perfect. As Leonard Cohen quipped, “There is a crack in everything.That’s how the light gets in.” But  I think the mysterious writer to the Hebrews said it best.

“Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see.” Heb. 11:1

Hey! Keep the faith fun Foto Challengers and as you do check out Cee’s other contributors at…

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Found In Nature