02/11/2025
Do you focus on and contemplate God throughout each day, and in everything you do? Is your awareness and imagination being used to find the Lord in every circumstance and activity in your life? These are our questions to consider today, and the portion of our faith that we are called to examine. Let’s begin with a verse from Isaiah 26.
“Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.”
Isaiah 26:3 KJV
I was driving into work one grey wintery morning and came to a stop at a traffic light. As I sat there looking about, I watched the trees being blown by the wind and noticed that their uppermost branches were like tiny fingers reaching for heaven. This led me to realize that the motion of the very trees themselves reminded me of the swaying body of a saint in fervent prayer. I was overcome by the Holy Spirit and began to pray with the trees... at that moment my day took on a new dimension of faith.
When we walk through life with little expectation of meeting God, we are banishing Him to some faraway place as we live out our physical lives, and we miss his most incredibly rich lessons. In doing this the spiritual aspect of our consciousness is robbed of joy. There is nothing we do or say, no experience we have, that God doesn't want to be a part of. He enriches us in the minutia just as He does the grandest events of our faith.
“Am I a God at hand, saith the Lord, and not a God afar off? Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith the Lord. Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord.”
Jeremiah 23:23-24 KJV
We are not meant to worship creation, but Pastor Oswald Chambers wrote of looking for God in his creation when he expressed himself using these words...
"Learn to associate ideas worthy of God with all that happens in nature - sunrises and the sunsets, the sun and the stars, the changing seasons, and your imagination will never be at the mercy of your impulses, but always be at the service of God." - Oswald Chambers
The danger is in beginning to worship the creation over the creator, and this distinction should always be maintained. God is worthy of our worship, but His creation merely gives us a glimpse at who He is... a sense of his character and grandeur.
When I would watch my children, and now as I enjoy my grandchildren, I am always amazed at the love and ability of God. When I pass a simple cross on the edge of a highway, I am struck by the heartbreak of our losses, and also the suffering and sacrifice of Jesus. Love, it surrounds us, but without the suffering and calamity of life we lose our ability to appreciate its enormity and depth... there is no perspective.
“Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”
Romans 5:3-5 ESV
Having said that, there is not only amazement in birth, but in death as well. There is love present in each of these experiences, but we must imagine it... we need to feel the Father in the joy of arrival, and in the eternity of departure. It is just easier for us to endure the joy and happiness of new creation, while being so hard to choke back the tears and sorrow of separation. However, God is present in both, and is equally loving and grand... His Son Jesus has secured that love in us, even unto death.
“For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Romans 8:38-39 ESV
So, as we traverse life, and move from conception to death, there is nothing that can separate us from God... except our own lack of imagination and concentration. He is in every bud that bursts forth and every leaf that falls; He is in the swaying trees and the tiny branches that rise like fingers pointing to heaven. All that remains is for us to realize He is there and meet Him in our every breath. Are we doing this each moment of every day? Are we breathing in His breath of life and exhaling praise?
Prayer:
Father, thank you for surrounding me with reminders of your presence in my life. Father, I pray this morning that you remove the darkness from the glass of my eyes and let me see you in everything that surrounds me. Lord, keep me focused on you and let my imagination never fail to find you in even the most insignificant of life's events. Let my every breath magnify you; from my first to last. Let all those who love me know that I offer my every breath to you, and that my last exhale will not be taken from me but offered up to you willingly and lovingly. Joy, it is my life, and love, it is your gift... if only all mankind would use their eyes to see this reality, and use their minds to imagine your depth and breadth which is beyond their ability to see. Holy, Holy, Holy are you my God who fills my life just as you fill heaven and earth. Holy are you who reveals yourself to us in every created and uncreated thing… the outstretched branches of the trees, and the love of your Son Jesus. Hear me as I pray today and open my eyes, my heart, my mind, and my soul, that I can witness you always, and in all things, forevermore. Eternal are you who was, and is, and is to come, and merciful are you who stretches out your hand of grace to invite me to join you there. Hear me catch my breath and sigh in awe at your splendor as I witness you today, and take pleasure in hearing me in both shout and whisper as I say…”O my God, how marvelous you are!”
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Amen!
“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.”
1 Corinthians 13:12 ESV
Rich Forbes