A world-view shift... one God's been working in me for over a year now... triggered by a story I'd read before... and came across again today... in the treadmill read...
Several years ago one of my students who lived a distance away and rode a crowded bus to college each day said to his wife as he went out the door one morning, "I'm just going to go out and immerse myself in God's creation today." The next day his parting words were the same. On the third day, she called him back, "Don't you think you ought to go to class today? A couple of days of walking in the woods or on the beach is okay, but don't you think enough is enough?"
He said, "Oh, I've been going to class every day."
"Then what," she said, "is all this business about immersing yourself in creation?"
"Well, I spend forty minutes on the bus each morning and afternoon. Can you think of a setting more thick with creation than that --- all these people created, created in the image of God, created male and female?"
"I never thought of that," she said.
"You mean you've never read Genesis?"
--- Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand PlacesPeople... male and female... God's greatest creation... the only ones bearing His image...
A shift... to consider the masses in Wal-Mart... or those on a crowded city bus... as creation...
The evidence that they are the most beloved... of all creation... is the brokenness... the woundedness... the scars from the many inflictions of the enemy... no other part of God's creation gets that kind of special attention...
These... people who cross our paths... block our paths... are the neighbors... we are commanded to love... as we love ourselves...
How about you... do you love Wal-Mart at 5 p.m....? Or overcrowded public transportation...? Do you recognize God's greatest workmanship... when you see it...?
Jesus said... Whatever you did for the least of these... you did for Me...
This is a verse with which I struggle... seeing Him... in the least... the grumpy... the rude... the everyday masses... in Wal-Mart at 5 p.m....
Perhaps I need to make a point... to go shopping more often at peak Wal-Mart hours... intentionally immerse myself in God's creation... ask Him to open my eyes... my heart... to what He sees... and feels...
If we are going to enjoy and celebrate and live this gift of place in which the Lord God has placed us, we are going to have to embrace the people around us with the same delight as we do the hawks soaring above us and the violets blooming at our feet. Men and women, children and the elderly, the beautiful and the plain, the blind and the deaf, amputees and paralytics, the mentally impaired and the emotionally distraught --- each a significant and sacred detail of nature, of God's creation.
--- Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places
Lord... help me see Your image... in each of Your creations...
[Note... Yet again... I failed at posting the readings for The Journey on Sunday... so here they are a day late... but will sneak back... and add them to the bottom of yesterday's...]
This week's readings for The Journey...
Monday Genesis 27
Tuesday Genesis 28
Wednesday Genesis 29:1 - 30:24
Thursday Genesis 30:25-43
Friday Genesis 31
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