It’s the view I see when I work at home – Main Street from the second floor of the rectory. There used to be a lovely but dying hydrangea tree a dozen feet in from the sidewalk, but it was removed a few months back. The house across the street was up for sale back then – the offices for Tost. I don’t know whether it sold or the owners changed their minds about going elsewhere.

In less than two weeks, this won’t be where I write and work. I won’t see life from this particular vantage point. It won’t be Manchester people I see as I look out, tending to their daily lives as I tend to mine. It’s something I’ve pondered.

I hope I learn the lesson of this particular perspective – that what I see is always limited, framed by who I am, when and where I live, and what I notice. What I see, the particulars of my life, offer a specific view. It could have been a different view with different particulars, but it wasn’t. It is in this place, with these people, that I have lived. There’s a grace to that, to seeing the hand of God here…

And mindful that the same can be said of all the places and times. Even the ones still to come. And that I’ll love the next one as much as I have the ones that came before.

(The header image is the view I had three years ago at this time…)