Yesterday was the Sabbath, a day to rest in the ultimate ecstasy of meaning that God loves us. The earth was conceived, designed, and made to demonstrate that love and point us to Him. It will never save us to be aside nature but it will certainly nurture a worshipful heart filled with gratitude and thanksgiving. Yesterday, as has been our habit since moving to West Tennessee, we spent the Sabbath afternoon picnicking beside The Mighty Mississippi River. Its spring might was laid out topographically as flood levels were traced in long paralleling lines of mud brown down its banks buried now in the green grass of spring. It was still rain-swollen as many of the massive cottonwoods lining its banks stood with their trunks buried in the swirling water while their crowns softly sang a towering song of companionship far above the heaving surface of their ancient friend. There is the Nile in Egypt, the Amazon in South America, and our beloved Mississippi that carves our continually changing western boundary. I often challenge my freshman students to go jump in this great river and the few most alive take me up on it. My children have grown up beside this river and it will forever be a part of their formative Christian years always beaconing them to spend a part of their Sabbath marveling not that they love God but that He loves them and “demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”, and the Mississippi carves that on the boundary of their heart.
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