The world around you is anything but ordinary, because God’s fingerprints are on every part of his creation. Creation is meant to make you rejoice, so when you step out your front door in the morning, give God the glory for the day.
Something amazing happens whenever I wheel outside our front door!
Hi, I’m Joni Eareckson Tada, and in the morning when I go out the front door and wheel outside to head to Joni and Friends, almost always – and I’m not exaggerating – almost every time I will quote out loud Psalm 84, “[Oh, Jesus] How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord Almighty!” And if not that, I will sing. How can I keep from singing? I mean, come on! The way the sun shadows speckle the front lawn or how the sun makes diamonds out of all the dewdrops on the grass; the pear trees in my neighbor’s yard, looking so green and lush; those tall pine trees way up on the hill beyond our street, when they catch the morning breeze in their top branches, it is so rhythmic and beautiful, I’ve just got to stop and whisper thanks to God. We’ve got a crepe myrtle tree just beyond our front door and in the autumn it is ablaze with red, and whenever I spot it as I wheel down the front path, I always say, “Oh, glory! Here’s the blazing bush itself on Mount Horeb!” Like the hymn goes, “This is my Father’s world and to my listening ear, all nature sings and around me rings the music of the spheres.” Yep, what a way to live – to look for God and to honestly see him in flower gardens, rows of trees, in bushes and blades of grass.
In our guest bedroom, I have a framed piece of embroidery on the wall. My girlfriend stitched it for me as a gift years ago, and it’s a favorite quotation by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and it goes, “Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God. But only he who sees takes off his shoes; the rest just sit around it and pluck blackberries.” So every day, friend, it’s like I’m taking off my shoes. The world is anything but ordinary. It is crammed with heaven, with God, with his fingerprints everywhere. I mean, wouldn’t it be something if there were special eyeglasses that would actually let us see God in absolutely everything? Okay, like, is every common bush really afire? Well, I believe it is. As a painter, I took off the world’s eyeglasses years ago. Those eyeglasses judge beauty in a different way, in an artificial way, a flashy, glittery way that guilds every lily with fake gold. Oh, no, but the eyeglasses we wear as Christians see miracles in every simple, wonderful creation of God. And why not? God designed this beautiful world and then breathed life into everything that inhabits it. The morning sunrise is a gift. The wind, the trees, and the birds that sing their sweet little notes – all of it a gift. The Bible tells us that all of creation declares the glory of God, and from that, we learn that creation is more than just evidence for God’s existence. No, John Calvin said that “There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice.” In other words, creation itself is bursting with life and infused with meaning.
And I love the way John Stonestreet and Shane Morris put it. They write, “Just as we human beings are not merely the dust that we are made of, but images of our Creator, so every flower and star and grain of sand is charged with divine truth and beauty… It means that every person we meet is an immortal image bearer whom we have a duty to love, respect, and value. This thought should radically alter the way we live. We cannot walk out of church on Sunday morning and immediately fall back under the spell of our secular age.” That’s so true. And I cannot wheel out my front door in the morning without giving God the glory for the day.
© Joni and Friends