It Was Good

So this will be a weird post, I think. Very random, maybe qualifying as "mystical"? (gack, I hope not...) I have no idea.

But I've been mulling something over the past 6 months or so.

I walk quite a bit in my neighborhood. Stress reducer, get those little seratonin molecules moving around. I live in a beautiful, rural area. Lots of trees, lots of heavily wooded acreage, lots of birds & wildlife & bugs, muscadines and honeysuckle, pine and oak and red maple, sunflowers and wild roses.

As I've walked lately, the thought has occurred often: Stop and see what the LORD chose to make!

I don't know why I never really thought to stop & look at what God chose to do in the place where I live. Ever. In my life.

But He's nudging my thoughts to see, to listen, to smell, to feel the wind off the lake as it rolls up the hill. I find myself walking along, and suddenly this slight breeze comes and lifts the hair off my neck in the middle of 98-degree-my-eyes-are-stingin' (!) weather. I get this incredible "the hills are alive with the sound of music" moment, and I'm looking over my shoulder to make sure no one can see me because I still struggle with the fear-of-man thing. I see no one, so I lift my heavy, sweaty arms into a "T" and walk along and rejoice that He made wind and brought it to me. He's making me stop in my tracks to watch the dragonflies and search for the robin who called. He's pushing me to wonder at the tall, skinny pines and the blue bird babies in their nest in my bird house and the roses that popped out in the spring.

I think what's happened is that I've begun to watch the skies a bit more intently, wondering if today might be the day of His appearing. No, I'm not one who tracks with Harold Camping, nor do I believe that any person can predict the date of His coming. I know the LORD could delay another millions years. I could die tomorrow and miss seeing, from this angle, the sky being split in two.

But so much is happening in our world: earthquakes and governments being shaken and disease and drought and war. And I can't help but wonder. (I think that's healthy, to an extent. It keeps me on my toes, spiritually. I am more mindful of obeying NOW rather than tomorrow, of confessing my sin sooner rather than later, of reaching out quickly rather than letting the opportunity pass.)

I am also mindful that, at some point, this world will be destroyed. Sin has so marred it. (Don't you ever wonder what this place looked like in the beginning?) And there's something that makes me a bit sad when I think that God must burn it.

Because He made it, and because He found pleasure in it. And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was good (Genesis 1:31).

And so there's a part of me that wants to worship God by looking at all that He's made & enjoy it (as I should've been doing all along). I need to observe all that I can and be amazed that someOne could actually do that! I need to look at what He's done and find pleasure in it, exclaim at it, praise God for sharing His creative omnipotence with us, and not let it find its end without marveling at the One behind it all.

Don't you think we should? Don't you ever wonder if there's some level of grief in God's heart when we are so bored by nature, that we walk so blankly by the most exquisite of creations without seeing anything, so rushed and weighed down by the non-eternal?

Do you think He might delight in us stopping long enough to enjoy, truly find pleasure in, something that He designed for us to join in with Him in delighting in?

And so I walk. And I stop, a lot, and try to truly see. And I am sad that the huge oak in my back yard and the sweet gum up by the road and the foot-cooling moss on the hill will have to be destroyed some day. And I'm sad for why it has to be destroyed. And I enjoy it now as a way of saying "Thank You" and "You are, truly, awesome."

While I continue to peek at the sky and wait.