January 28th 2025
Hi Friends,
When you look outside, what do you see? What do you think about? How does it affect you?
If you’re “normal,” you see sunshine and feel uplifted. Clouds bring a sense of gloom. A squirrel is a very active varmint that makes a mess of bird feeders and leaves a mess under the trees where it chooses to eat. Frost on the windshield means that extra minutes are required to get where we want to go. The prospect of a cold snap next weekend is just depressing.
In their insightful book, Reframation, Alan Hirsch (a missiologist) and Mark Nelson (a pastor), make this interesting observation: “The issue is not just a loss of traditional religious faith and a declining church but a more profound loss of our whole sense of transcendence, our spiritual instincts, and our consciousness of the divine. … we now see the world as an object to be categorized and consumed—a significant move away from the premodern perception, which considered the world to be the realm of the sacred. … God is revealing himself to us but our senses are blunted, and we no longer have the eyes to see him. God is speaking to us but we have lost the ears to hear him and lack the language to respond.”
We might also add that we have become too busy, doing the Lord's work or our own, to actually take the time to consider where God might be showing up or revealing something we need to understand. We become so blunted by our lives (good and productive as they might be or miserable and disheartening as they might be) that we literally don’t notice God.
Do you know why Jesus told parables? It was because most people of his day were not even looking for God’s kingdom or listening for God’s voice, despite what their theological aspirations and understanding indicated. He couched the truths of the kingdom of God in stories about fields being bought and sold, determining the weather from a sunrise or sunset the work of a shepherd, the art of viticulture. Only those who really looked and listened would see. All the others would either be entertained, bored or frustrated by the stories.
The old west coast Canadian folk singer, Valdy, has a wonderful line in one of his songs: “The Frost King has come and, with a flick of his thumb, turned our windows to renaissance art.” Do you think about the Frost King and his art on a frosty morning? Do you think about the “wind that blows wherever it wills” when a chinook arch is in the sky? Do you look at a starry night sky and think of a promise made to Abraham? Do you remember a promise to all humanity when you look at a rainbow?
I’m not trying to make you feel guilty. I’m calling you to wake up! To quote scripture, “our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.” We exist in “the realm of the sacred.” God is showing up all around us. He wants us to know him, love him and trust him. If we don’t, whose fault is that? We have to want to see. “Open our eyes, Lord. We want to see Jesus.”
Blessings!
Doug