Creation and Grace

We get so preoccupied with ourselves, the words we speak, the plans and projects we conceive, that we become immune to the glory of creation. We barely notice the cloud passing over the moon or the dewdrops clinging to the rose petals. The ice on the pond comes and goes. The wild blackberries ripen and wither. The blackbird nests outside our window, but we don't see her. We avoid the cold and the heat. We refrigerate ourselves in the summer and entomb ourselves in plastic in winter. We rake up ever leaf as fast as it falls.

OUR WORLD IS SATURATED WITH GRACE, and the lurky presence of God is revealed not only in spirit but in matter-in a deer leaping across a meadow, in the flight of an eagle, in fire and water, in a rainbow after a summer storm, in a gentle doe streaking through a forest, in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, in a child licking a chocolate ice cream cone, in a woman with windblown hair. God intended for us to discover His loving presence in the world around us.

For the eyes of faith, every created thing manifests the grace and providence of Abba.
(Written in "The Ragamuffin Gospel" by Brennan Manning)


How often do we just stop and look around us at the amazement and beauty of creation?

"So mighty is his power, so great is his strength that no one fails to answer" (Isaiah 40:26).

The older I get, the more amazed I am at how fast time seems to fly by. Yet, there are nights when I go to bed realizing that I never stopped once, all day. I never really took in all the beauty around me. I never grasped God's grace and love that were all around me that day.

So, I pray this prayer...and I not only pray it for myself, but I pray it for all of you:

"Dear Lord, grant me the grace of wonder. Surprise me, amaze me, awe me in every crevice of your universe. Delight me to see how your Christ plays in ten thousand places, lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his, to the father through the features of men's faces. Each day enrapture me with your marvelous things without number. I do not ask to see the reason for it all; I ask only to share the wonder of it all." (Rabbi Joshua Abraham Heschel)

God bless you all!