Psalm 85:10-11

Phaon Crescent Butterfly, Snake Warrior Island Natural Area, Miramar, Florida, September 2013


Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet;
righteousness and peace will kiss each other.
Faithfulness will spring up from the ground,
and righteousness will look down from the sky.
Psalm 85:10-11

When a song of lament fills our lives 
from suffering or unrealized dreams;
disappointment with life, with God;
the love of God for us becomes our hope:
it will not leave us or forsake us.

Luke 10:23-24

Passionflower, Trinity Butterfly Garden, September 2013

Then turning to the disciples, Jesus said to them privately, "Blessed are the eyes that see what you see! For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it."
Luke 10:23-24

I stand up at the altar and wonder if people see what I see: the woman who stays after communion at the rail praying in earnest, with quiet tears. The couple who are holding hands, hardships being faced with strength and dignity. The child who looks up at me, bread in hand and says "AMEN!" with gusto. By communion I have seen Jesus a lot and before the service ends it is not unusual for me to choke up and my voice becomes raspy. I see Jesus everywhere and it leaves me with such a sense of awe and wonder that I, too, and often moved to tears. It wasn't always that way and I am grateful for the Lord giving me new and better eyes to see. Where have you seen Jesus today?

Psalm 108:4-5

White Peacock Butterfly, Shark Valley Visitor's Area, Everglades National Park, August 2013

For your steadfast love is higher than the heavens,
and your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.
Be exalted, O God, above the heavens,
and let your glory be over all the earth.
Psalm 108:4-5

Do you expect that our daily experience of God's love should be this transcendent? And if so and if this isn't our reality, what is getting in the way? Holding us back? Clouding our vision? Robbing us of such an experience of God as this?

Luke 5:26

Bumblebee on Buttonbush, Shark Valley Visitor's Area, Everglades National Park, August 2013

Amazement seized all of them, and they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying, "We have seen strange things today."
Luke 5:26

Psalm 145:15-16

Great Blue Heron, Shark Valley Visitors Area, Everglades National Park, August 2013

The eyes of all look to you,
and you give them their food in due season.
You open your hand,
satisfying the desire of every living thing
Psalm 145:15-16. 

For what are we grateful this morning?
Let us strive with eyes that look from the heart to be more aware of the blessings in our lives. Often these come in simplicity, too often lost in a world and lives made ever more complicated in trying to compete, or even survive.  But if we choose not to just throw up our hands and declare ourselves too busy to uncover a deeper simplicity and responding in kind with lives of more abiding gratitude, then we have choices to make to move us ever forward in living into such a reality. What will choose towards a greater simplicity then today?

Philippians 1:8

Viceroy Butterfly, Shark Valley Visitor's Area, Everglades National Park, August, 2013

For God is my witness, how I long for all of you with the compassion of Christ Jesus.
Philippians 1:8

Many things may define relationships: love, power, convenience, peace, grace, friendship, harmony, abuse, compassion, and so on; the list is long and varied, full of the good and bad, the healthy and unhealthy. The Apostle Paul sees compassion as one of Jesus' defining attributes and one that Christians should embody deeply and employ constantly. Christians could do much to witness to Christ by living lives with less judgment and more compassion. Turn off and turn away from the sources in your life that witness to you of heartlessness and judgment and fill your days with such things as will renew you ability to foster compassion in a world that thirsts  for it. See what life more closely and lovingly following Christ can be! 

Psalm 119:147-148

Anhinga, Shark Valley Visitor's Area, Everglades National Park, August 2013 

I rise before dawn and cry for help;
I put my hope in your words.
My eyes are awake before each watch of the night,
that I may meditate on your promise.
Psalm 119: 147-148

Whoever thinks Christians know peace so deeply 
that every moment breathes it,
that they sleep soundly, awake in joy,
live life as it is meant to be lived
free of all annoyance, fear or dread, 
might be surprised to find
that this is hardly ever true.
We know Christ and live with the tension
of unbelief and faith, 
modeling our own brokenness
before the world by the bold living of it.
What gets us through the day
is knowing, clinging,
even blindly,
that our cries will not go unanswered.