DAILY CONTEMPLATION

Happy Coptic New Year

The creation proclaims outright the Creator; for the very heavens, as the prophet says,
declare the glory of God with their unutterable words.
We see the universal harmony in the wondrous sky and on the wondrous earth;
how elements essentially opposed to each other are all woven together in an ineffable union
to serve one common end, each contributing its particular force to maintain the whole;
how the unmingling and mutually repellent do not fly apart from each other by virtue
of their peculiarities, any more than they are destroyed, when compounded, by such contrariety;
how those elements which are naturally buoyant move downwards –
the heat of the sun, for instance, descending in the rays – 
while the bodies which possess weight are lifted by becoming rarefied in vapor,
so that water contrary to its nature ascends, being conveyed through the air to the upper regions;
how too that fire of the firmament so penetrates the earth that even its abysses feel the heat;
how the moisture of the rain infused into the soil generates, one though it be by nature,
myriads of differing germs, and animates in due proportion each subject of its influence;
how very swiftly the polar sphere revolves, how the orbits within it move the contrary way,
with all the eclipses, and conjunctions, and measured intervals of the planets.
We see all this with the piercing eyes of mind, nor can we fail to be taught by means of such a spectacle
that a Divine power, working with skill and method, is manifesting itself in this actual world
St. Macrina