The Smile on the Face of God

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

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

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

Albert Schweitzer on the unexpected secret to happiness

"I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know. The only ones among you who will be truly happy are those who have sought and found how to serve."

Sometimes It's Hard to Say Thanks

The surgeon lifts his knife, lowers the blade, makes his incision, which is trailed by a red ribbon of blood. Were you not anesthetized, you would most certainly feel the pain. Tissue splits under the scalpel's razor edge. There is nothing natural about this experience. If we knew nothing of it, if we had no trust in the medical procedure, we would be horrified. We walk into a brightly illuminated room. A sinister, masked figure hunches over a body. He is surrounded by accomplices as he bends to the task. You see the blood and realize with horror that he's slicing someone open. What good could possibly come of this?

Yet, knowing what we know, instead of being horrified, we are thankful. Instead of thinking the man a criminal, we find him good. What appears to be a game of death is instead an exercise in health. We know the man's purpose and we trust his skill.

What we observe has not changed, but the perspective has, and that makes all the difference. Is it really surprising, then, that God might be able to bring good out of circumstances that right now appear to be so bad?

© 2005

Give Away the Feeling

How does it feel when someone treats you like a friend? How does it feel when someone is kind to you without expecting anything in return? How does it feel to be loved? Picture that feeling. Then realize: this is a feeling you can give away.

God is invisible. But you can show people exactly what he looks like. All you have to do is love.

© 2005

G.K. Chesterton on Art

"Art is born when the temporary touches the eternal."

We Should Still Be Writing Psalms

There are two books of the Bible which, in one sense at least, should never be complete. One is the Book of Acts, which chronicles the birth of the Church. We keep writing that story of the ever-expanding kingdom of God, a story we write with our lives.

The other book we continue to write is Psalms, which relates our human experience to God, and God to our human experience. This is what makes the Psalms a book of such deeply felt worship, as well as a book we each must write in our own experience, if not also in our words.

© 2005

The Hands of Time, The Arms of God

My watch measures time by the tick. It clicks off seconds, minutes, hours. The date changes in the small window on the watch face. Twenty-four hours, another day gone.

The sun marks time, too. Day and night. Season and year.

I watch the sky. Stars cartwheel through space, the gears of time in perfect sync. The moon changes its face as the months come and go.

Leaves show green, then golden. They fall, leaving naked branches behind to catch and sift the snowfall. The earth warms. Buds form and burst open. Seasons come, seasons go -- birth, life, death, birth, life, death -- measured by all creation.

Dreams also measure the march of time. An idea formed. A desire born. A goal established. A plan executed. A fulfillment. A disappointment. A success. A failure.

Sooner or later the hands of time strangle us, the final measure of a lifespan. But the arms of God enfold us, embrace us, hold us secure in the now that never ends.

© 2005

Four Stories, Four Ideas

Powerful ideas are conveyed in comparatively simple stories, easily remembered and passed on. The first 11 chapters of Genesis tell four compelling tales, each with a beautiful or haunting message.

1 | Creation

The Storyline: An exquisite world is spoken into existence.
The Point: All good things begin with a sovereign, all-powerful, creative, personal provider God.

2 | The Fall

The Storyline: Humanity undergoes a catastrophic moral collapse.
The Point: God has granted the terrifying courtesy of choice. With choice comes responsibility; with responsibility comes the Divine assessment we call judgment.

3 | The Genesis Flood

The Storyline: Floodwaters sweep the world away in a disaster of devastating proportions.
The Point: There is a moral compass: the revealed heart of God. Disregard it and hellish consequences follow. Respond to it, and, even in our imperfection, we will be sustained by the kind and forgiving grace of God.

4 | The Tower of Babel
The Storyline: Humanity undertakes a futile, ambitious building enterprise and, in the process, disintegrates into confusion.
The Point: In the arrogance of human ambition, the smallness of humanity is revealed, but the grandeur of God fills the universe.

© 2005

Love Expressing Itself

I thumbed through a Bible the other day, tracing out the idea of kindness. I found the word used side by side with friendship and generosity, hospitality and warmheartedness, doing good and expressing love, being helpful and showing sympathy. I saw kindness coupled with understanding, patience, courtesty, thoughtfulness, compassion and forgiveness.

The Bible expresses the idea unmistakably. It is love that proves we have faith. Well, it's kindness that proves we have love.

Strong Help, Limitless Possibilities

Think about the complexities of Creation. God is the one who dreamed up aardvarks and sequoias, cashews and laughter, aurora borealis and touch. He thought up Creation and then made it happen.

God has all power. He can do anything.

Think about your bad habits and realize God can help you change them. Think about love and know that God invented it and shows us its highest form. Think about thought itself and ponder this: God made your mind.

God has all power. He can do anything. And how does he use this awesome, unlimited power? It is unleashed for good. For our good.

© 2005

Do You Want to Get Well?

You realize you are ill. Your stomach is churning, your head is throbbing, your eyes hurt. Your shivering convinces you of your fever. You are weak and lightheaded, and the symptoms persist. By the time you make it to the doctor, you are genuinely concerned -- a concern you see mirrored on his face. But he reassures you, gives you an accurate diagnosis, stuffs a prescription in your hand. You leave his office knowing that your restored health is as simple as following a few instrucitons and being patient with the healing process.

Upon returning home, you put the medication aside. You disregard the instructions to force liquids and get plenty of rest. Not surprisingly, your health fails to improve. If anything, it worsens. At times, this concerns you -- so much so that you take out the medications and the doctor's instructions and spend a few minutes looking at them. Nevertheless, looking at them is as far as it goes.

Now, what's wrong with this picture?

And James wrote: "Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says."

© 2005

The Kiss of Eternity

There are those moments when time kisses eternity -- just a feathery brush, but it is filled with astounding possibilities.

Do you comprehend what I'm saying?

Are there those times when you KNOW you were made for eternity? When time feels so confining, so ridiculously temporary? Moments when you feel that time is fine, as far as it goes, but you know it just doesn't go far enough.

Do you ever feel as St. Augustine felt?

"Lord, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are weary until they find their rest in you."

© 2005

Today Is a Blank Page

The page is empty. Well, it was. Sitting there with its blank expression, just daring me -- daring me to write something, anything, across its face.

I think that blank page knew something about me, something I also know about myself. I'd rather leave the page empty than write empty words -- sentences without meaning.

Today is a blank page, standing before me as if to say, "Go ahead! Write something across the facec of this day. But write something that matters. Write something with you life that will change today, that will make it somehow better."

Touch a life with kindness.

Inhale wonder.

Throw your arms wide open and embrace God's surprises.

Do something! Something that matters. Write today! Write it with your breath, your blood, your mind, your feeling, your eyes, your heart, your hands.

Lift your pen, your life. Breathe! Create!

© 2005

God Is a Consuming Fire

When you embrace God, you embrace a consuming fire. Go ahead, take him to your heart, but know what it means. Know what of necessity must be consumed. There are things we hate, but cannot release. In time, they will burn. There are things we love or somehow feel we cannot part with, yet hinder us. They are worthless and, in time, will burn away. There are things that are good, but not yet pure. They will be refined. Our God is a consuming fire, but the things we need, the things that make us better, the things we truly desire will only increase in value as they pass through the flames.

© 2005

Astounding Beginnings

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1).

Glancing through a magazine one afternoon, I ran across this imaginative piece of trivia:

If the solar system were shrunk to the size of New York's Manhattan Island, the next nearest star, Alpha Centauri, would be 5,500 miles away, in Jerusalem.

We know, for instance, that traveling at the speed of light, we could reach the sun in about eight minutes. Traveling on at lightspeed, it would take more than four years to reach the next nearest star. At our current rate of space travel, however, it would take 100,000 years.

If we were to shrink the sun to the size of a pin head, the solar system would fill a large living room.

Let's say the living room is in a beach house of the coast of Southern California. Alpha Centauri, that next nearest star, would be on Catalina Island, 26 miles away. Shrunk to this scale, our entire galaxy, the Milky Way, with its 200 billion stars, would be 600,000 miles in diameter. It's not, of course, it's a trillion times larger than that.

Which accounts for one galaxy. But there are more than 10 billion in the observable universe.

"In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth."

© 2005

Burning Gift

A ball of fire suspended in space, millions of miles away, warms me. Today, arctic air touches my face, but still I feel the heat of that fire -- my round, white sun. It's brilliance fills my world. I see by its glow. Its rays force life into the planet, my home. Long, swift fingers of light caress, prod, knead -- pushing, pulling.

Life does trail from those radiant fingertips.

Life and light and warmth.

My star.

My sun.

My fire.

© 2005

The Meaning of Words

It's easy to say, "Lord, my life is yours." I do not stutter through the syllables. My tongue does not twist on the vowels or consonants. I comprehend the quotes, the comma, the period. I do not need a dictionary to decipher these five short words:

"Lord, my life is yours."

The English is easy. But the math is hard.

How can I count the cost?

© 2005

C.S. Lewis on God's Inescapable Presence

"We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with him. He walks everywhere incognito."