We each have the power to put a smile on the face of God.
Here's how.
It's truly remarkable to think that God could look at us and be pleased by what he sees. We know our weaknesses; he knows them in infinitely greater detail. How can we please God? We have a hard enough time pleasing ourselves. When he looks at us, what could he possibly see that would put a smile on his face?
We may already know.
Suppose we each complete this phrase: "God would be pleased if I were less ..." Less what? What is there in my life today that should not be there?
Or this: "God would be pleased if I were more ..." More what? What are the good things about me that ought to increase.
When we read Scripture and listen to our conscience, we get a fairly accurate image of what we are, a clear reflection of what we can become. The mirror only fogs over when we are hypocritical, when we tell ourselves how good we are, yet go on hurting others and hurting ourselves.
© 2005
Friday, July 29, 2005
Sunday, July 24, 2005
Who Painted the Sky with Flames?
Northern Illinois
Someone set fire to the sky, cast a flaming ball over the horizon and ignited the clouds. I stand transfixed as the flame overspreads the early evening sky, west to east. The glow brightens, the blaze intensifies, the color deepens. It is as spectacular a suset as I've seen.
I know why the sky is blue and the sunset red. It is explained in the physics of light.
Traveling at 186,282 miles per second, it takes eight-and-a-half minutes for the sun's white light to cover the 93 million miles to earth. But what I see as white is actually a blend of the prismatic colors of the spectrum -- red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet -- and those lightwaves are not of equal length. Red lightwaves are long; blue waves are short.
The sun's light strikes the clear air of earth's atmosphere, but the clear air is actually a sea of countless molecules, each molecule only slightly smaller than the wavelengths of visible light. As light enters this sky-sea of molecules, it is scattered, but the long and short lightwaves are scattered unevenly, so that the colors reach me unevenly.
As I look up into the afternoon sky and my eye gathers the scattered light, it is the blue I see most. Later, as the sun moves lower and lower toward the horizon, its lightwaves travel a greater distance through earth's atmosphere. The short lightwaves of blue are scattered in all directions so that fewer reach me, while the longer lightwaves of red and orange and yellow are scattered less. I see them, and they set the sky ablaze, painting clouds with the brush of colored light. If the sky is dusty or smoky, the effect is intensified further, and the sunset is spectacular.
It is spectacular now. Even the cloud wisps in the darker eastern sky glow like pink neon.
Too quickly though, the flash-fire of sunset spends itself, and the day's last dying embers flicker in the purple smoke of twilight.
I knoew why the sky is blue and the sunset red. Does that make it any less the brushstrokes of the Creator?
© 2005
Someone set fire to the sky, cast a flaming ball over the horizon and ignited the clouds. I stand transfixed as the flame overspreads the early evening sky, west to east. The glow brightens, the blaze intensifies, the color deepens. It is as spectacular a suset as I've seen.
I know why the sky is blue and the sunset red. It is explained in the physics of light.
Traveling at 186,282 miles per second, it takes eight-and-a-half minutes for the sun's white light to cover the 93 million miles to earth. But what I see as white is actually a blend of the prismatic colors of the spectrum -- red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet -- and those lightwaves are not of equal length. Red lightwaves are long; blue waves are short.
The sun's light strikes the clear air of earth's atmosphere, but the clear air is actually a sea of countless molecules, each molecule only slightly smaller than the wavelengths of visible light. As light enters this sky-sea of molecules, it is scattered, but the long and short lightwaves are scattered unevenly, so that the colors reach me unevenly.
As I look up into the afternoon sky and my eye gathers the scattered light, it is the blue I see most. Later, as the sun moves lower and lower toward the horizon, its lightwaves travel a greater distance through earth's atmosphere. The short lightwaves of blue are scattered in all directions so that fewer reach me, while the longer lightwaves of red and orange and yellow are scattered less. I see them, and they set the sky ablaze, painting clouds with the brush of colored light. If the sky is dusty or smoky, the effect is intensified further, and the sunset is spectacular.
It is spectacular now. Even the cloud wisps in the darker eastern sky glow like pink neon.
Too quickly though, the flash-fire of sunset spends itself, and the day's last dying embers flicker in the purple smoke of twilight.
I knoew why the sky is blue and the sunset red. Does that make it any less the brushstrokes of the Creator?
© 2005
Friday, July 15, 2005
Lyric: "Gifts Come Down"
Joy or sorrow, happiness or loss,
Praise or failure, benevolence or cross;
Pain or pleasure, every gift's received
From our Maker, known or unperceived.
Life brings hardship side by side with good;
God brings order only sometimes understood.
Now we see through a glass darkly,
Tomorrow we will know and we are known.
© 2005
Praise or failure, benevolence or cross;
Pain or pleasure, every gift's received
From our Maker, known or unperceived.
Life brings hardship side by side with good;
God brings order only sometimes understood.
Now we see through a glass darkly,
Tomorrow we will know and we are known.
© 2005
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
