I set out on a journey last week to Quail Country Plantation in Arlington, Georgia to do a little quail hunting with a good friend. Since I had plenty of time to get there, I avoided the humdrum of the interstate and set my GPS to take the back roads. I specifically asked it to avoid Albany. I’m sure there are plenty of nice folks in Albany and it is surrounded by magnificent quail hunting preserves but the place has never floated my boat. So, I went through little burgs like Butler, Ellaville, Plains, Herod, Dawson and Leary on my trip. It was very pleasant. The early spring scenery included flowering dogwoods and cherry trees, verdant fields of wheat and others where huge tractors were busy preparing the soil for the planting of peanuts and cotton. We spent an idyllic afternoon following up fine bird dogs as they quartered the broom sage beneath a canopy of towering longleaf pines. We ate like kings and spent the following morning adding to the quail harvest. There is just something about walking up behind a brace of fine bird dogs on point, listening to the machine gun sound of the quail as they break cover and the report of the shotgun. Quail make fine table fare as well and we brought home a nice mess. All too soon, it was time to leave and head back home. I again set my course along the back roads. Since I had missed choir practice, I plugged in a CD of the anthem for the following Sunday in order to memorize the tenor parts of the song I would be singing. The piece, entitled The Majesty and Glory of Your Name, perfectly fit my mood after two days of enjoying the bounty of God’s earth. The lyrics were adapted from Psalms 8 by Linda Lee Johnson and set to music by Thomas Fettke. It goes like this: When I gaze into the night skies And see the work of your fingers; The moon and stars suspended in space. Oh what is man that you are mindful of him? You have given man a crown of glory and honor, And have made him a little lower than the angels. You have put him in charge of all creation: The beasts of the field, The birds of the air, The fish of the sea. But what is man, oh, what is man that you are mindful of him? O Lord our God, the majesty and glory of your name. Transcends the earth and fills the heavens. O Lord our God, little children praise You perfectly. And so would we and so would we. The piece ends with a towering chorus of alleluias as well it should. Though we trash it, fight over it, pierce it, gouge it, ignore and otherwise desecrate it, God’s creation is, indeed, glorious and majestic. It surrounds you each and every day. Do your best to enjoy and be thankful for it.
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