all the things

beauty wrapped in husks of a dying world

We tromped thru the corn a few weeks ago before the snow came. It was a brisk fall morning and though my lungs weren’t quite ready for it, the kids were. So to the fields we went. Our little ones chased the cold away with armfuls of cobs and did their best to cozy up to the cows. And us Mommas? We followed their lead. They picked up decaying corn like they’d found nuggets of gold, and we followed suit. I grabbed up this messy little husk and snapped a shot on my phone. For weeks now I’ve been staring at this photo. Trying to find words for the beauty hidden within this quick shot of lifeless corn.

There’s nothing special about my photo or this little forgotten husk either. The photo wasn’t styled or planned; I’m no photographer. Surely your lives would be no less complete or glorious not having laid eyes on this cob of corn. It’s the accidental fruit of a morning meandering thru the cold and mud and cows and then — bam…

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BEAUTY.

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Because me and my camera are magic? Nope. Because GOD is.

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This world is littered with glimpses of glory aching to awaken our souls. It crunches underfoot and lingers in our landscapes but even if we have eyes that see, it’s a fight to see past ourselves. We choose blindness every day in one way or another. We suppress the truth like it says in Romans 1:18. The truth that we were made for Him, and that He deserves the glory.

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I’ve been circling a few verses in Romans as I ponder the beauty in this world. Wondering how in the world stray cobs of corn can hold even a bit of wonder. And this verse struck me:

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, being understood FROM WHAT HAS BEEN MADE, so that men are without excuse. Romans 1:18-20 NIV 1984 (emphasis mine).

Did you catch that? God’s eternal power and divine nature are on display for us every day. Where? In WHAT HAS BEEN MADE. The dirt, the trees, the sky, the universe. You. Me. And even the corn cobs of yesterday that seemingly hold no value at all. We tend to look right by them. We willfully suppress the truth of God that is marked in them. Every once in awhile though, in an accidental phone snapshot, this beauty beckons to be named. God’s handiwork.
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His power and divinity wrapped in husks of a dying world.

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And I’m back at the beginning, where God “spoke life into dust” (lyric from Into Dust by Mack Brock). We read in Genesis 1:31 that God created and called it good. Very good. He claims GOODNESS in what He’s made. He claims himself in it really.

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I see a garden, and in it I see beauty; slivers of which we still see today. Still GOOD too, just like the God whose heart they reflect. This world may be broken, but it breathes out the whisper of the same voice that made it all. This world is speaking, and it’s telling the story of the God behind it. The Greek word for “what has been made” in Romans 1:20 is poiēma, which is where we get our word poem. God intended from the very beginning to communicate with us thru what He’s created, and what He’s crafted is a work of art, my friends.

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This world is a poem that whispers to our souls. And even the dried up useless pieces still tell the story.

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Besides this verse calling out the poem of God in creation, it also calls out the human condition; where we all find ourselves apart from God’s grace. When I first read these verses in Romans, I didn’t see myself as the wicked men who suppress the truth (in Romans 1:18). That couldn’t be me. I capture snippets of glory and call God out in the trees (sometimes). So clearly I’m not THAT guy. Right? But as I studied and read commentaries, I realized that right before this Paul set the stage with the gospel saying,

the gospel…is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes… A righteousness that is by faith from first to last… Romans 1:16-17

He leads with the gospel and follows up by explaining why we need it in the first place. Our wicked hearts willfully choose to suppress the truth, and therefore, are without excuse. So the wicked truth suppressor… ah-hem… that IS me after-all.

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We may deny the truth that we were made for Him. We can reject Christ and the truth of God’s word. But not one of us can deny the beauty we see in the world around us. I’ve read that it’s the undeniable witness. An ever present evidence that God does in fact exist.

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Beauty is from God. There’s really no place for it in accidental cosmic explosions or naturalist evolution. It doesn’t add up in atheistic theories. Even scientists have a hard time making sense of beauty in regard to it’s purpose and origin in this world.

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But still, there it is, plainly on display for each and every soul that’s ever lived. The breathtaking wonder of God’s DNA; the beauty of his thumbprint. The stamp of divinity that nobody can explain away. It‘s beautiful, and it’s what we long for. It’s the thing that has us climbing mountains, chasing sunsets, and catching snowflakes on our tongues.

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I want to point out here that I’m not promoting pantheism (which worships the universe and/or nature as god itself). The created things themselves are not to be worshiped. The trees are not God. The sun is not God; nor is the universe. They contain the mere fingerprint of God as I mentioned before, but are not themselves God. I believe it’s worth mentioning because I write a lot about seeing God in nature, and I don’t want to unintentionally encourage the worship of nature or created “things”. There’s a big difference. Even as we move on in Romans, we find they struggled with this same kind of misplaced worship.

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles… They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator — who is forever praised. Amen. Romans 1:24-25

I’m finding that I have more in common with the Romans than I first thought. My fallen nature leans towards suppressing the truth (v18), not glorifying and thanking God for what He’s made (v21) and exchanging the worship of God with the worship of things (v23).

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That’s a pretty depressing yet surprisingly accurate list. So how does all this relate to the corn cobs and the beauty and the poem of God being whispered in our ears? It reminds us that by nature we lean toward not seeing God. We lean towards stuffing the truth of the very evident God into black hole of our souls. It means we don’t thank him and glorify him as we ought. It means if we’re not worshiping Him, we’re actively worshiping something else.

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It means we’re in battle my friends.

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Let’s remember to hit our knees, raise our hands, and give God glory.

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Let’s fight for eyes that see him in the corn cobs. He’s wrapped his beauty, bits of his reflection, in the husks of this dying world.

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Let’s crack these eyes open to poem before us.

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Resources:

Check out this sermon by John Piper (Displays of God Removed the Excuse For Failed Worship) . I found it while researching these verses in Romans! SO good.

oh how he loves us

Oh how He loves us.

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge — that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:17-19)

The love of Christ beyond our thought capacity. It surpasses knowledge ya’ll. We CANNOT understand the depths of it. And as I think on this verse, I’m all the more convinced that this love is something we grab hold of and grow to understand TOGETHER, just like it says.

…that we may have power, together with the saints, to grasp how wide, long, and high…

I’m weeks into the study of community — contemplating trees, clouds and the skies above, and I see this God of ours in every detail. In the colors and in the call for us to link arms together.

As I stare out to where heaven meets earth (as the David Crowder band says), I’m blinded by the DEPTHS. The lengths He’s gone to show us LOVE.

When we think of this love we see the cross. The glorious cross. It’s love at its truest. But the imagery, that loses some of us, doesn’t it? It’s hard to close in on. It seems so far off. And yet, it’s the ultimate picture of His bottomless love for us.

Thankfully, His love is found sprinkled in everything in between too. So God makes it easy for us. HE PAINTS THE SKY. His love graces every sun ray, and the lines of light waves that color the skies. He created it all. LIGHT and WAVES and PARTICLES, and yes, even the science behind them.

It’s His hand that colors our world.

It’s His hand behind the cones of vision that make up our sight. It’s His hand that makes it possible to even open our eyelids and take in the morning sunrise or the hints of green we breeze by in nature. It’s His hand that brushes the blue above that overhangs our every day.

There it is. HIS design. And it’s woven in LOVE, my friends. We miss it though. We forget God’s handiwork. We don’t see him in the details. But we question Him in the brokenness, don’t we? We think His hand owns the injustice. We somehow think all that is God’s doing. Not mankind’s. And all the while, as we raise our fists in indifference, we are still here, folded in His mercy. Sandwiched in His grace in a world that we believe is all science and no God.

I was in the middle of making dinner — lasagna at that — a meal I haven’t made in almost 5 years. Oddly enough, it was the dinner I made the night my hubby fell ill a few years back, and I remember watching him moaning on the coach holding his chest and thinking my lasagna was the cause. Since then, the meal has literally no appeal around here. But this week Fall blew in and with it came God’s grace saying it was time to boil the noodles and stop holding it against lasagna and The Pioneer Woman (it was her recipe). It sounds funny, I know. But being ripped apart thru illness and hard circumstances sticks with you in ways you wouldn’t have thought.

There I was tearing apart my kitchen, slinging pasta and sauce, and my daughter and son came running in telling me I HAD TO SEE THIS. I grumbled as they pulled me away from the kitchen, but I nearly lost my breath when I saw what all the fuss was about.

THIS turned out to be a jaw dropping sunset snuck in between the bitter fall wind and a field of gold. It makes me tear up knowing that my kids know this about me. They know my crazy, and they can’t help but take part. They’re in the car with me as God’s glory comes to life on our drive to school and everywhere in between. They roll their eyes and make fun of me, but I don’t mind. Annoying them brings me secret joy. JOY, you guys. And joy comes again and again too, each time they snap a sunset on a grandparent’s phone and text it to me or come running to tell me of the random glory they’ve found in a leaf or cloud or feather.

So it came as no surprise as I dropped all things pasta, stuffed my feet in my son’s poop boots (we have a chicken coup, ew), grabbed my camera and chased the color down County Line Road. I was a sight — but you guys, SO WAS THE SKY.

And as I said, we go deeper together. We grasp the lengths and depths together dear ones. In steps community as we link arms and name Him in this world. It’s contagious. Just like with my kids. They see me naming Him, and they feel permission to do the same. And then somehow, in the middle of the mess, we see a little more of this God of ours. We experience a bit of that fullness rising in our chests, reminding us whose we are and why we’re here. It’s gives us perspective as we glorify God. We become smaller, and our troubles do too.

Today it’s me linking arms with you via a wonky lasagna and a corn sunset that screams COME LORD JESUS. And not because life is hard. And it is, IT IS. I know this more than anyone. But because He loves us in ways we cannot even begin to comprehend. Come Lord Jesus because we were made for YOU.

I may be in my pajamas and wielding a camera while standing in the freezing cold corn, but I’m here to call God out in my little corner of the world. I see Him in nature, in creation and I can’t help but snap shots and log the beauty. The pictures aren’t the beauty I hunger for either. They help tell the story, but it’s the God behind them that steals the show. The God I see in the every day. The one smiling at us thru sunsets and weeds and random birds.

I’m not sure where life finds you today. But I know God went to great lengths to show His love to this world. You may not have a photo taking obsession or corn framing your view like I do, but you have a sky of blue above and a sunset of colors that never fails to make an appearance. It stretches the expanse of life and brings a sense of peace to our souls, no matter where we land.

That’s what blue does, by the way. It’s been studied by smart people. Look it up for yourself if you don’t trust the crazy pajama pasta lady. But BLUE CALMS. It affects our minds. It affects our bodies. It brings a sense of calm and clarity to our senses. Maybe it’s just a tidbit compared to the realities we face. But still, there it is. It’s what God designed to ice the cake of every dang day. And He loves us so specifically, so graciously, that He’s blanketed us in this blue sky soul balm every day.

Mind blown.

OH HOW HE LOVES US. Head over to you tube and sing with me…