God On The Mount and God In The Box

                            
 

God As Air Traffic Controller

As I was sitting outside praying this morning a plane quietly roared past miles above me.  I marvel at planes, at wings really, that they exist.  This morning I thought of all the celebration that had to of occurred when God thought that concept up, then made it, and showed it to all the Angelic hosts of heaven.  Humans have yet to conceive of any amount of time necessary for all the partying that went on in heaven as God brought out each new invention for each new concept.  Can you imagine God getting all the angels together to roll out the wing; “Ok here it is, A WING, and here is a dragonfly, a  bluebird, a Boeing 747, and a Space Shuttle.   All will fly because of wings.”  Obviously, heaven was attentive as God showed them all the things that were going to use WINGS to fly.  But it gets better.  You know how Oprah used to give gifts to all the audience, “look under your seat and you all get one” or the day she said, “YOU ALL GET A NEW CAR!!!”  Well, imagine at the end of the WING demonstration God said, “AND YOU ALL GET A PAIR!!!”   I would say that was a few thousand years of whooping it up and a few thousand more of God just trying to get them all landed back in heaven.   

   

Living Aware Of Being Un-condemned

Good morning Father, I love you.  I am overjoyed by your graces but I am so underwhelming as a cheerleader for you.  Help me to do better.  God, you are so Holy and in that, I am confronted with Your reality and mine as well.  Spare me from fear and from turning away in the face of such overwhelming condemnation by my unholiness being in such close proximity to Your Holiness.  “There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ…” but there is that sin in me and I am reminded of it when I read where you were present with Isaiah and he was “undone”.  I am so grateful for the fact of “no condemnation” and, for even the human weakness of feeling condemned, because they both serve to make me worship you.  I can celebrate in worship while understanding the humility owed you for this act, This Greatest of all Acts of Kindness, “there is no condemnation!”  Thank You, truly, truly, Thank You.

The Greatest Undertaking Of My Life

One of my greatest concerns today is what ministry will be mine when I leave the college studio?  I have spent years teaching art as a way to thank God and to live a life of ongoing gratefulness as one way to love Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.  In a few years, I will walk away from that life and embark on the last journey of life on earth.  What ministry will be mine in those final years of my life?  It is no small thing to reinvent yourself, especially when your physical self is gnarled and knotted in the reality of the aged.  It will require a tremendous economy of effort and exquisite wisdom of living to do what ministry and art-making require.  That is going to be one of the greatest undertakings of my life, meaningfully living my aging years.  I have found that following God is above all things, a great adventure.    

    

A Mighty Boulder In My Wretched Stream

Oh, what a wretched mess we are in, COVID, politics, riots, and the constant screeching heads!  I’ll admit it is pervasive but not for me.  I struggle with sorrow and sorrowfulness but like a massive boulder in a stream, it flows around me but not over me and certainly not in me.  As an artist, I am prone to depression, melancholia, anxiety, an overwhelming sense of responsibility for the world but I have found a balm in a quiet and prolonged aloneness with God.  He is the boulder I sit upon which keeps me in the stream but not overwhelmed by it.

    

Good morning Father, nice cooldown!!!  I can feel fall around the corner, trees are waning, days are shortening, crops are coming in.  You have a marvelous way with routine that comforts humans, a season seems long enough, summer has almost been spent, and then comes fall with its leaves, pumpkins, flannel, and putting in firewood.  God, what was your process?  Did you think about seasons for a while, did it take you years or centuries or millennia or was it just a twinkling of your perfection?  God, you are a great mystery that shared yourself with us in Jesus but that was certainly a twinkling, and the Bible, again a twinkling, just moments of sacred ecstasy, purest gold, red gold, heavy with meaning but with a cosmic storehouse of secrets.  God, you are so good, so kind, seasons are just a sampling of wonder unimaginable, of goodness that if only momentarily considered produces a physical response of smiling, contented joy.  Dawn is now pushing the darkness back west, the Great Tennessee is reflective of your heavens, the world is waking, my night has once again become day before me.  You are a good, good God and a Mighty Boulder in my daily stream.  

 

 

Good Morning

It is always good to say good morning because morning is one of the great kindnesses.  It is like love, and water and touch; like color and fur and smelling; like wings and trees, hair and snow and lips and stringed instrument’s vibrations, like fire and birth and a human being growing inside another human being, like taste and the moon and sex; like your lover being 98.6° and worth repeating, love being in us, the ability to be in love and for another to be that way toward us—a kindness like no other.  Good morning! 

                                   If morning doesn't do it for you maybe our granddaughter will.

Your Greatest Gift Is To Pay Your Greatest Debt

I once heard the great land artist Andy Goldsworthy say,  “Sometimes I am truly amazed that I am alive!”  This morning I read this statement by Henri J.M. Nouwen, “There is no tinge of death in God.  God is pure life.  Therefore, living in the house of God is living in a state of constant ecstasy, in which we always experience the joy of being alive.”  These are both very true statements about the state of being aware that one has won the greatest prize in all the existence of the cosmos by being allowed to be.  The great quest of life is to be found by The One to whom you owe such a great debt of gratitude—so you can thank Him!