Tuesdays: Coffee with a Pastor

Join Pastor Jason Tuesday anytime between 11am – 1pm for coffee and conversation at Inspirational Grounds Coffeehouse (1208 N Ellis Ave, Dunn).

Open Your Eyes & There it Is

Each year, our family heads to the lake for much needed rest and relaxation. We don’t sit around all day doing nothing. In fact, we do a lot of swimming and water skiing. Honestly, I spend most of the day on the boat! And in the water, I find renewal. (I don’t think it is a coincidence that baptism utilizes water to wash and refresh and renewal us!)

There is something about the natural world that is healing to the busy, over-worked soul. For me, the water is healing for my body, mind, and soul. Even though I stay active all week at the lake, the water reconnects me to life, to energy, to self, to God! And Paul understood the power of the natural world to connect us to the eternal power of God Almighty.

Listen to what Paul says in the opening chapter of his letter to the church in Rome:

The basic reality of God is plain enough. Open your eyes and there it is! By taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such can’t see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of his divine being. So nobody has a good excuse. What happened was this: People knew God perfectly well, but when they didn’t treat him like God, refusing to worship him, they trivialized themselves into silliness and confusion so that there was neither sense nor direction left in their lives. They pretended to know it all, but were illiterate regarding life. They traded the glory of God who holds the whole world in his hands for cheap figurines you can buy at any roadside stand. – Romans 1:19-23 (The Message)

We all have our cheap roadside-stand figurines that we pretend can connect us to God: our books and crosses, our CDs and mp3s, our Bible apps and devotional podcasts, our prayer rooms and sanctuaries, our yoga mats and prayer chains… the list goes on. These things certainly are not meaningless. And yet, as Paul says, we too often trade the Glory of God seen so plainly through creation for some of these trinkets.

What could it do for your life and relationship with God to stop trading Glory for figurines? In other words, try this:

• Allow the grass to be your prayer mat
• Let the songbird be your mp3
• Listen to the river and the wind for a devotion
• Let the forest or the lake be your sanctuary
• Look to the tree branches for a cross
• Look to the flowers, the rocks, and the forest animals for a word from God

If you open your eyes to the world God has made, then you find God all around you breathing, hovering, creating, sustaining, and redeeming right in your midst, in every direction, through everything and everyone.

Whatever you have going on this week, I invite you to stop and take some time to reconnect with God “by taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created!” There is healing and rest and renewal all around you in the very simple things God has made.

Coming Soon…

• Monday (12 noon) – Prayer Conference Call with Pastor Joanie (563-999-1222)
• Tuesday (11am-1pm) – Coffee with Pastor Jason (Inspirational Grounds, 1208 N Ellis Ave)
• Wednesday (12 noon) – Bible Study and Prayer (Conference Room)
• Thursday (morning) – Ladles of Love (Food Ministry)
• July 23-26 (6-8pm)- Vacation Bible School at Hood