Sustained Even in Denial

This evening as I came out of work it felt like a typical spring day... only it's February!

It was sprinkling just a bit and a slight breeze was blowing and blue skies were peeping out from behind the rain clouds.

As I drove closer to home, I noticed the clouds moving out. To the right of me, on a ridge top overlooking a valley, the sun was shining through the clouds and as I've thought so many times, I thought of how Jesus will come in all of His glory and it will be so much more than our eyes can ever imagine.

Thoughts like that come and go for me. I'd like to say I'm focused on Jesus all the time, but I'd be lying. Too often I get distracted by my to do list and all of my worries and I sometimes find that a whole day has gone by and I've not spoken to Him. More importantly... I've not listened to Him. Listening to Him (or not) can truly make or back my whole day.

If I open my eyes and ears and heart He's there, though. I can see him in the smiles of other people. I see Him in the green pine needles and the blue skies and the clouds and the rain. I hear Him when the wind blows through the windchimes and I can feel Him when Melody wraps her arms around my neck.

I've often wondered how anyone can look around and deny the presence of God. How can someone believe that all of this just happened... that some cataclysmic event occurred and BOOM here we all are? I understand that science is a belief in facts and that faith isn't always based on objective facts...

and we're also told that the foolish things will confound the wise.

Tonight I was reading A Peculiar Glory by John Piper and a statement made really struck me. Piper was talking about how two people can be around the very same thing or read the same statement and get two entirely different interpretations about it. He was discussing how both Peter and Judas had been with Jesus for around 3 years, but Judas never really saw Him.

I don't want that to be me.

Piper wrote, "They are sustained by the God they deny."

See, even if you don't believe in God, it doesn't make His reality any different. Every good gift is from above...from God. As Piper writes, "God is the source of all life." All things were created by Him, for Him. We are told in Acts "In Him we live, and move, and have our being."

Tonight, my prayer is that God will open our hearts and minds and ears and eyes so that we will see Him, hear Him, but above all, know Him... because He is worthy.