It's a beautiful day / Don't let it get away - "Beautiful Day", U2
I kicked off my morning commute with this recent classic from U2. The kinetic chord progression in the chorus kicked in just as my car crested a small hill to reveal the hills clearly in the distance, directly beneath a few white clouds. Combined with a good time in the Word this morning praising God with the many names He has, it was an uplifting half hour on the road with good music, good sights, and an active mind looking forward to the day.
I loved the tableau of the eastern hills underneath the moderately cloudy sky. Because of a slight bit of rainfall last night, the air had cleared up - for the first time this week, I could make out all of the bumps, depressions, jagged edges, even houses and treelines along the hills. The rainclouds let a small amount of sunlight through. As my car loped through the miles on 280 and 680, I felt like God was reinforcing a lesson to me from this past year - that extraordinary beauty can be found in imperfection and weakness.
To be frank, many of the public perceptions of Christianity portray a religion with a worldview that is "all happy all the time." Even within the Church itself, we often perpetuate this stereotype with the songs we sing and some of the evangelical messages that are preached - "Give yourself to Jesus and you'll have no more sorrows." Then, when a person accepts God's gift of salvation and commits his life to Christ, then encouters trial and tribulation, questions set in - "This isn't what I signed up for... what's so great about this life? I thought my troubles were over!"
As a matter of fact, for the Christian, his trials may only just be beginning. On the one hand, declaring faith in Christ can often essentially cause Satan to double his efforts to turn him away - once he doesn't see the life he thought he'd signed up for, people will often become apathetic and turn away from the love for God they once knew. This is the unfortunate story of many that I've known, particularly those coming into or out of college.
However, an important lesson I've had to learn is that it is through the whole of this mortal life - both the good times and the hard times - that God desires to mold, shape, and refine His people. A life following after God is not all blue skies - clouds, thunder and lightning, hail and sleet and snow and rain will all blur the vision of the traveller on God's path. Sometimes you grow weary and cold, and your heart aches. Sometimes you feel like giving up.
It is this exact process by which God works His extraordinarily beautiful process of redemption - taking something so intrinsically flawed, weak, and imperfect as human nature, and gradually changing it into the likeness of Jesus Christ, His Son. This is the hope that believers have, and the source from where joy springs. Even when it's dark, cloudy, and raining, what we can't see is that the rain is clearing out all the crud from the air so we can see clearly the beautiful hills down the road. Even when circumstances seem overwhelming and we can't help but cry out in the midst of our weakness and inability to do anything good in the face of adversity, God is taking the opportunity to clear out the crud in our lives so that we can more clearly experience the overwhelming joy of His presence in our lives.
I've had several conversations in the past, with both believers and non, as to why God chose to create a flawed world with the capacity for sin inherent in every person. I don't know all the answers... but I suspect that one of the reasons is that the God who personifies work and beauty enjoys the process of making beautiful things out of His people, and out of the whole of human history. One day He'll let us in on the big picture in all its fullness, and I fully expect that it will be a work of art so marvelous that I can hardly wait to experience it.
Till then, I'll simply have to enjoy little God-given moments like this morning - the seemingly mundane hills and sky merging and being transformed into a beautiful and touching picture - and breathe a little prayer of thanks each time.
It's a beautiful day. Might not be easy, or happy, or pain-free... but I'm not going to let it get away.
I kicked off my morning commute with this recent classic from U2. The kinetic chord progression in the chorus kicked in just as my car crested a small hill to reveal the hills clearly in the distance, directly beneath a few white clouds. Combined with a good time in the Word this morning praising God with the many names He has, it was an uplifting half hour on the road with good music, good sights, and an active mind looking forward to the day.
I loved the tableau of the eastern hills underneath the moderately cloudy sky. Because of a slight bit of rainfall last night, the air had cleared up - for the first time this week, I could make out all of the bumps, depressions, jagged edges, even houses and treelines along the hills. The rainclouds let a small amount of sunlight through. As my car loped through the miles on 280 and 680, I felt like God was reinforcing a lesson to me from this past year - that extraordinary beauty can be found in imperfection and weakness.
To be frank, many of the public perceptions of Christianity portray a religion with a worldview that is "all happy all the time." Even within the Church itself, we often perpetuate this stereotype with the songs we sing and some of the evangelical messages that are preached - "Give yourself to Jesus and you'll have no more sorrows." Then, when a person accepts God's gift of salvation and commits his life to Christ, then encouters trial and tribulation, questions set in - "This isn't what I signed up for... what's so great about this life? I thought my troubles were over!"
As a matter of fact, for the Christian, his trials may only just be beginning. On the one hand, declaring faith in Christ can often essentially cause Satan to double his efforts to turn him away - once he doesn't see the life he thought he'd signed up for, people will often become apathetic and turn away from the love for God they once knew. This is the unfortunate story of many that I've known, particularly those coming into or out of college.
However, an important lesson I've had to learn is that it is through the whole of this mortal life - both the good times and the hard times - that God desires to mold, shape, and refine His people. A life following after God is not all blue skies - clouds, thunder and lightning, hail and sleet and snow and rain will all blur the vision of the traveller on God's path. Sometimes you grow weary and cold, and your heart aches. Sometimes you feel like giving up.
It is this exact process by which God works His extraordinarily beautiful process of redemption - taking something so intrinsically flawed, weak, and imperfect as human nature, and gradually changing it into the likeness of Jesus Christ, His Son. This is the hope that believers have, and the source from where joy springs. Even when it's dark, cloudy, and raining, what we can't see is that the rain is clearing out all the crud from the air so we can see clearly the beautiful hills down the road. Even when circumstances seem overwhelming and we can't help but cry out in the midst of our weakness and inability to do anything good in the face of adversity, God is taking the opportunity to clear out the crud in our lives so that we can more clearly experience the overwhelming joy of His presence in our lives.
I've had several conversations in the past, with both believers and non, as to why God chose to create a flawed world with the capacity for sin inherent in every person. I don't know all the answers... but I suspect that one of the reasons is that the God who personifies work and beauty enjoys the process of making beautiful things out of His people, and out of the whole of human history. One day He'll let us in on the big picture in all its fullness, and I fully expect that it will be a work of art so marvelous that I can hardly wait to experience it.
Till then, I'll simply have to enjoy little God-given moments like this morning - the seemingly mundane hills and sky merging and being transformed into a beautiful and touching picture - and breathe a little prayer of thanks each time.
It's a beautiful day. Might not be easy, or happy, or pain-free... but I'm not going to let it get away.
posted by Bob at
6:07 PM
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