A Match Made in Heaven

A hummer, a book trailer for WHAT THE RIVER KEEPS, thoughts on aging, and a new giveaway. Whew.

Friends,

​I caught the tryst on camera a few years back, mere days past summer’s solstice: a secret encounter, in a pairing so mismatched, few ornithologists or botanists suspect it ever happens at all.

Nor did I, until I stumbled on the dawn scene in our asparagus bed, then a mass of six-foot ferns riddled with shy, green, solitary blossoms no more than a quarter-inch long. There, before heat or bees arrived, a female Anna’s hummingbird flitted from flower to flower, sipping. Usurping breeze and insects, the bird pollinated the tiny blooms in return.

The interaction was so intimate, I felt myself an intruder. Yet so surprising, I couldn’t look away.

Consider the blossoms, after all. Nearly colorless, their nectar meager, they’re wallflowers in spring’s flashy dance of beckoning blooms.

And the bird? A thrumming wonder, its demands incessant, its preference for brilliant cups of nourishment unrivalled—and, given the bird’s oversized hippocampus, remembered. This beauty knew where lusher food flourished.

How astonishing that the two met at all.

Like all holy introductions, I mused.

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​“They have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them.”
​—Luke 12:2

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“All creatures look to you to give them their food at the proper time.
When you give it to them, they gather it up;
when you open your hand, they are satisfied with good things.”
​—Psalm 104:27-28

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​“Can you fathom the deep things of God or discover the limits of the Almighty?”
—Job 11:7

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​“‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,’​ declares the LORD.
‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so my ways are higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts...” —Isaiah 55:8-9

(First shared in my column “Scripture on Camera” over at The American Scientific Affiliation’s God and Nature Magazine, #2, 2025.)

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📙📙📙 From my bookery . . .

A few days ago a different sort of beauty arrived in my inbox, this time in the form of a book trailer for What the River Keeps. (There’s music . . . is your sound on?)

Photo/video credits: Ruth Sebring, the National Park Service (public domain), and Cheryl Grey Bostrom.

I mentioned a while back that trade review giant KIRKUS awarded the story one of their prized starred reviews . . . Now this month KIRKUS REVIEWS also named the novel to their “Best Indie Books of June” list. (Tyndale House is an “indie”—independent publisher.) Of six books on that list—two were adult fiction, and What the River Keeps was one of them! What an unexpected honor and surprise and joy—and such a blessing for the book!

Many of you have followed What the River Keeps since I began writing it under the working title River Hoarder. It’s a long, long road to publication. I couldn’t be more excited to AT LAST share it with you!

PREORDER it now? Pre-release, the paperback is 40% off at Baker Book House.

📙📙📙NEW GIVEAWAY: Reply with “HILDY” in your subject line to enter for a copy of WHAT THE RIVER KEEPS! To celebrate the book’s birthday, I’ll draw three winners. 🧡

And a little drum roll . . . for last month’s GIVEAWAY WINNERS!

Congratulations to Hattie Ramerman, Deborah Clark, and Vicky Daniels! You each have won a copy of The Gospels from the Women’s Devotional Bible: The Message, which NavPress will release on August 5!

Below is one of my contributions to this fresh edition—a piece on growing older.

Ecclesiastes 12:

"Aging: Such an ugly word—or so it sounds to many of us. Time’s ravages frighten us and threaten to rob us of the lives we’ve crafted for, well, all our lives.

At the first whiff of physical or mental decline, many of us fight back. We wage war on our accumulating wrinkles and failing bodies with nutrition or exercise, potions or surgeries or mantras that marketers promise will arrest our slippage. Or we deny and deflect decay with achievements, belongings, and pleasures.

Until we can’t.

True, self-care, productivity, and recreation have value. But ask the elderly this: Did all those doodads and distractions fend off mortality or impute lasting significance? The wisest will answer like the aged Quester, who, after investing his best years in self-improvement, accomplishment, acquisition, and pleasure, summarized his condition like this: “In old age, your body no longer serves you so well.”

Nothing we’ve accomplished, fortified, or enjoyed can change that fact one iota.

Our best efforts only stall the inevitable. As the Quester reminded us, “Life, lovely while it lasts, is soon over.” All our achievements, all our carefully crafted beauty and pleasure—everything we hoped would fulfill us and others and shape our identities? “All smoke, nothing but smoke,” he said.

How, then, would God have us live this brief life? How can we prepare for the days to come—days when aging muscles and grip grow slack and weak, when joints stiffen, eyes and hearing dim, sleep flees, and teeth fail? When death, and the body’s decay, loom?

The Quester’s advice in this book of wisdom transcends time.

First, he said, “Honor and enjoy your Creator while you’re still young. Before the years take their toll.”

He’s talking about the seasons of youth when, like spring and summer trees, we’re sending down roots and growing branches and leaves and babies and strength—when we’re trying so hard to succeed and earn and etch ourselves into posterity through careers or beauty or children or public service or ministry. Those exhausting years when, beneath all that frenetic activity, life seems so conditional, and we’re so afraid we’ll fail.

In those seasons, rather than prioritizing stunning leaves, flowing sap, and chlorophyll production, we’d be wise to first delight in the one who creates those blessings—and to settle into God’s love. Wise to allow God’s peace and promises to infuse our efforts with eternal meaning and grace.

Second, when old age advances, when time mars our greenery and storms break our branches and we wonder what we can possibly do next, The humbled Quester’s last and final word applies: “Fear God. Do what he tells you.”

What God tells us is this: Honor and enjoy your Creator. From youth to old age, our purpose is to live in God’s love—Love that returns us to spring.

“That’s all?” we ask.

The Quester’s answer: “That’s it.”

(Excerpted from The Message Women’s Devotional Bible © 2025 by The Navigators. Used by permission. All rights reserved.)

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A longer-than-usual letter to you, friends. Thanks for reading.

(From FB—with credit to the artist named in the corner :).

Love,

Cheryl