Everyday is a Miracle!

Driving, walking, riding around these last few days one can’t help but notice that Spring has indeed sprung!

Suddenly the earth has responded to the increasing warmth of the Sun, and the world is awash with glorious colour – there’s Daffodils, Tulips, Primroses, Aubrietia, Forsythia, the fresh and varied greens of new leaf appearing … Suddenly out of the death of winter life bursts forth in an amazing array. Wow!

Looking at it and enjoying it I couldn’t help but think it’s all such an amazing miracle! Yes I know the biologists and scientists can give us all sorts of explanations, but at the end of the day no one can explain just how it happens – the why of life at all.

I grew up on a farm and for a number of years worked in glasshouse horticulture, and later in landscape and garden maintenance. Working with nature has so many variables. We are dependent on what’s already in the system, not all seeds are the same, germinating conditions vary, etc. To produce a new breed of animal takes a lot of work with many failures, the same goes for producing new strains of plant life, some are successful, many are not.

Knowing the work that goes into the development of new breeds, or plant life, or for that matter ways of combating the various illnesses and diseases that afflict them, one can’t help but be staggered at the whole idea of life and how it works at all.

Life is a miracle – that it evolved for no rhyme or reason to what it is today, with no mind, power, or purpose behind it, doesn’t make any sense.

The Psalmist (19:1-4) spoke about the universe being a witness to the God who created it, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day by day they pour out speech and every night reveals knowledge… their voice goes out through all the earth…”

I wonder, have you heard it, have you got the message?

Paul said “In him (God) we live and move and have our being.” The fact I’m sitting here full of life is staggering, an amazing being with an amazing array of systems and functions, with a brain that far excels any computer. Wow!

Are you taking too much for granted, going to fast and missing the voice of God in the world about you?

Do you need to recover the wow factor?

Why don’t you stop and go for a walk in a garden or park…. take time to observe the world around you….. think about it, smell the fragrances… look at the stars, think about their courses… feel the wonder of your own heart beat and breath….think about the miracle of it all…

Let the thought lead to the wonder and the wow, and the wow and the wonder lead to worship - without the wonder there is no worship.

“O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder, consider all the works Thy hands have made…. then sings my soul my Saviour God to Thee, how great Thou art, how great Thou art!… When through the woods and forest glades I wander, and hear the birds singing sweetly in the trees….. then sings my soul my Saviour God to Thee, how great Thou art, how great Thou art!”

Life is a miracle, the world, yours and everyone else’s, take time to thank and praise God for it before you move on, and keep doing so when you do.

Heaven's Perspective

Perspective
Perspective is everything, if we don’t have it we are in trouble.

In Revelation we encounter a persecuted and suffering church, and things are not going to get better. From their perspective it doesn’t look or feel good, later on we will hear the cry, “how long, O Lord?”

Following the messages to the seven churches we see heaven’s door open and we are immediately launched into heaven, “Come up here,…” (Rev.4:1) was the summons – an invitation into the very presence of God, and my what a revelation.

A Throne
This word will be repeated numerous times. Yes there is a throne in heaven upon which God sits, and from that throne he reigns. He has the first and last word.

John says that before it was “something like a sea of glass” – nothing can disturb, or trouble the throne of God. God is not thrown into a quandry by what’s going on on earth. In fact in the words of the psalmist, “The One enthroned in heaven laughs” (2:4 HCSB) at the schemes of man.

God is Trinity
“One was seated on the throne…. seven Spirits of God or the sevenfold Spirit of God….. A Lamb…” God is Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, that blessed (happy) community of eternal fellowship that exists at the heart of the universe and is the cause and creator of it.

God is holy
The thrice holy – utterly unique One who is so much more and other than we are. How frequently we bring God down to our level, and then wonder why our Chrisitan experience is so feeble and frail.

The forever God
God who was.
God who is.
God is to come.
No beginning, no end. He reigns for ever and ever. Hallelujah!

Worship
We see him praised and worship:
1. For who he is (4:10).
2. For his work in creation (4:11).
3. For his work in redemption (5:9, 10, 12, 13).

How often our worship starts with ourselves – feelings: I don’t feel like it; self analysis: I don’t feel good enough; or with what we are going to do: “I will …”, “We will …” and then we wonder why we never get airbourne, why it seems hard work and little more than the old genie in a bottle trick.

When Jesus taught his disciples how to pray, worship came first, “Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name…” it’s about two thirds of the way through that we get the confession, “Forgive us our sins…” Maybe your prayer life is taken up with too much of yourself – it’s all about you. That’s whirlpool worship, it sucks you in and leaves you exhausted.

David stirred himself up, spoke to himself, “Bless the Lord O my soul…” Psalm 103:1. Worship involves a looking away from ourselves to Another who is worthy in himself, and secondly for what he has done.

We need to get God’s perspective
Getting into God’s presence and get his perspective makes all the difference.

Yes life for the churches John was writing to was tough and going to get tougher, but God was on the throne, and he reigns. Satan and those he works through will not win. The world is God’s, he has wrought salvation, and his people can have every stong hope in him.

Perhaps your perspective has become skewed, fear has become your consellor, and you are on a downer - It’s time to get into the presence of God, to see him on his throne, to know that he commands your destiny, to get his perspective on your life.

The Ordinary

A New Experience
One of the big issues we face today is living with the ordinary (by that I don't mean boring - that's an attitude of mind - or unenjoyable for that matter). Life it seems has to be constantly filled with events and excitement. Advertising continually pushes us in the direction of a new experience - as if the one we've got is past its sell by date, and the church is not immune from it - new worship, new and more exciting conferences, new ways of 'doing' church, the latest etc. ...

Another Drug
It's not that new things, events and excitement are in and of themselves wrong, it's the motivation. It's when we are dependent on them to keep life going, to keep it interesting, we have a problem - they are in danger of just becoming another form of drug, and when that drug no longer works we need a stronger one.

Nothing New
We only have to look at Israel in the Old Testment who had some tremendous encounters with God and saw miraculous provision and victories. Think about it, the Manna and the Quail in the wilderness became ordinary, shoes that didn't wear out became ordinary! And dare I say it even God became 'ordinary.'

We point the finger at them and wonder how they could think like that, yet we are just as guilty. Todays miracle can easily become tomorrows ordinary, yet everyday is a miracle.

It's not that events and excitement are wrong, it's that we were never made to live on a perpetual high. It cannot be sustained.

Are you taking life and the 'ordinary' blessings of it for granted? The people around you?
Are you failing to see life's little miracles because you have relegated them to the 'ordinary'?
Do you see church as a ordinary?
Are you always looking for God in extraordinary ways and fail to see and encounter him in the ordinary? (it's walking with God in the ordinary that leads to extraordinary encounters, not the other way round).