This morning I have just a handful of pictures for “Photo Friday.” It has been a spectacularly beautiful week here in Wake Forest, but various commitments have taken all of my time so there’s been little in the way of photography.

Most of these images show the untidy, unmanageable, accidental beauty of autumn in the middle of all these trees. Leaves need raking, pine straw needs to be pulled off the shrubs, and walkways need blowing off. Yet I love the feel of it, and I don’t think it could improve via me moving things around.

Same for the picture Naomi took of our son-in-law Craig with the children on Geoffrey’s first birthday. It is as natural as “portraits” come.

Such is life. We get up every day and we engage whatever we run into and things seldom look tidy or go according to plan.

In the middle of it all – if we are paying attention – there is the beauty and the art of grace. Not haphazard so much as real; not random but the designs of providence; not unmanaged so much as unmanaged by us.

I like that idea: “the beauty and the art of grace.”

Peace – DEREK