Spreading the fragrance of God's grace everywhere
Every day is a new day of discovery! God’s world, both physical and spiritual, is filled with wonder. Come explore God’s world with me as I see it for the first time.
It’s so easy to take eyesight for granted. We open our eyes in the morning and images appear before us. It’s as regular as the sunrise. That’s why the above meme quote caught my attention. Those visual images aren’t forced on me. Eyesight is a choice. I choose where to focus my eyes.
I asked that question as a group of women on retreat sipped coffee and munched donut holes. We sat at tables covered with autumn color tablecloths and mounded with pumpkins in various stages of ripeness. One lady had hauled dozens from her pumpkin patch to the retreat that morning from her stripped garden that came to an abrupt end with the threat of the first killing frost.
As the guest speaker at the retreat, my morning message was to be on seeing the nature of God through His creation. The retreat planners and I had scheduled an early morning nature walk as the first item on the morning’s agenda. We encouraged the women to either join a small group at a local park or sit outside for a few moments at their home before the retreat’s main session began so they could observe some part of nature. When we all arrived at the retreat center, we gathered in breakout groups to share our discoveries.
A new Christ follower came to our house, distressed. “Sometimes I feel like I’m going to explode if I don’t get away,” he told me. Family members were ambivalent at best and antagonistic at worst to his newfound faith. They told him church was a waste of time and questioned the number of hours and the distance he traveled in order to go to an out-of-town meeting. “I don’t want to go home,” he confided “and walk right back into it.”
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Travel is always easier when you take the trip with someone who’s been there before. That’s the part of the COVID19 shutdown and the ensuing economic decline that has rattled so many people. We’ve never been down this road before. We have no vaccine for COVID19. There’s a reason it’s called a novel virus. Novel means new and boy howdy, this one’s so new, it caught an entire medical community with moisture behind their ears.
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