Ndutu
I have been to Africa, and I find it captivating. The place is magical, beautiful, and alluring, but it also has this “heart of darkness.” It is a land of life living with death. Life and death intertwined together, inseparable.
Ndutu conveys many feelings that Africa holds and portrays to those who might have the privilege to experience it. It fills me with complex and contradictory emotions. At the same time, the pure beauty of this natural world is mesmerizing and enticing. What I see is God’s creation at its fullest in its intricate simplicity and plan.
Ndutu
There is a land like Xanadu
It is a place called Ndutu
It’s where you can go back in time
Remembering what once was, a life now difficult to find
Nature here, you become a part
Viewing in close proximity, not from afar
You see into a mammoth, intricate, complex plan
One of order, balance, necessity, survival close at hand
A tranquil land of quiet beauty and serene peace
With roaming grasslands and plains that never cease
An end in sight your eye never meets
Touches within you a yearning, a drive to seek
A vast green sea seems to stretch to eternity
Farther and farther than the eye can see
Yellow ripples of swaying seed heads
This is the place where the striped zebra are led
The call of the Rung-Necked Dove is the sound of the African song
The Rufous-Naped Lark’s sweet melody kindles your soul to long
A spectrum of colors wildflowers to feast
A strange dichotomy seen compared to the fierce, untamed beasts
Life and death are contiguous juxtapose
The circle of life is witnessed, proposed
Deep emotions within you rattle and stir
This place romances, beckons, infatuates, and allures
But the hurt and suffering the intense pain
Counterbalances the beauty to where there is no gain
The creatures are born with innately furled instinct
This drive is live, not die to become extinct
A strange sadness and morose melancholy it can evoke
The necessary sacrificial deaths, a conflicted grief it provokes
Life so short they never grow old
Legions and tales of the exceptions are the stories passed down and retold
Harmony and pugnacity are always on a delicate weighted scale
One moment there is triumph then the next it can fail
God’s paintings stretch broadly across the open skies
Time and space they try to defy
Crimson sunsets, pink sunrises, prism rainbows, and puff white clouds passing by have you pondering the reasons why
Here nature is fully bared on display
A glimpse of Eden unspoiled showing God’s power and ways
The beauty is profound when experiencing first hand
The feelings are awe and wonder when witnessing God’s plan
-Dr. Rhonda Milner
“And God said, ‘This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.’”
Genesis 9:12-16
“’For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’”
Jeremiah 29:11
“For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
Colossians 1:16-17
