This is the day

It was a hard upward struggle yesterday afternoon.  I had chosen to run my hilly course, so familiar now that my brain doesn't even have to think about the turns in the road.

The asphalt was broken into chunks in places.  Cracks appeared like a strange map across the pavement, leading to nowhere we have been before.  Potholes gave birth to even more potholes.  Even the edges of the road were beginning to disintegrate into the gravel.

And on my heart were so many people I know right now who are struggling with life, choices they have made, choices they never made, decisions and incidents beyond their control.  We are all falling apart, it appears.  But why are we surprised in this fallen, broken world.

My head was down, contemplating the grey, shattered road, trying not to trip.

After a particularly hard ascent, in which I thought about stopping and just walking the rest of the route, leaves began to appear beneath my feet, thousands and thousands of leaves, so deep that I couldn't help but notice them.  Indeed, I was shuffling through them, a myriad of shapes and colors and textures,  like every created day of our lives, heaped up into something beautiful.

And then, I raised my eyes from the hard broken places.  God was trying to get my attention.

My mother had a condition called synesthesia in which when she heard or played music, she saw colors, as if her senses blended seamlessly into each other.  When I looked up and saw the fellowship of trees clamoring around me, I could almost hear them singing. 

Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy before the LORD, for He comes... Psalm 96. 12

...the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.  Isaiah 55. 12

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And the wonder before me literally stopped me in my tracks.  It was a sanctuary. This is what glory of the LORD must resemble in some small way.  And how much do we miss because we are not looking, acknowledging, recognizing, not just His hand, but His Presence all around us?

God designed us to recognize beauty.  God wired us to recognize Him.  God paves our way with His faithfulness.  Even in what we cannot yet see beyond the turns in the road.

This is the LORD's doing;  it is marvelous in our eyes.  This is the day that the LORD has made.  Let us rejoice and be glad in it.  Psalm 118. 23-24

This very day.  Not just in the yesterdays.  Or tomorrow.  But now.

We make a conscious choice to be glad in it, not just on days of blue skies or circumstances favorable in our sight or when we feel like it.  But a grateful heart is observant and doesn't miss a thing, even in what we can't understand.  Because we can trust Him through it.  A glad heart sees things differently, a tool in our toolbox for how we will lead the rest of our lives day by day and be fully equipped to help others.  

Every day that we make a choice to rejoice strengthens us for what is yet to come.  I don't have to know the journey-- nor the outcome --to know God is good and His steadfast love endures forever.  That changes my vision.  That changes my heart. Even in this mess, this broken world, these incessant potholes.

I shuffled through the leaves like the days of my life.  And realized that the trees are still full of them, not one drifts down to join the others that God does not know about it.  His beauty is not just entrenched in the colors of the season or the impenetrably blue sky, but every day.   

The day was just a glimpse of what He has made.  A day that He walks with us.  The uphills don't have to be a battle.  The potholes are mere craters to avoid.  The brokenness is only temporary.  This is not the end of the story.  But right in the midst of His redeeming.

This is marvelous in our eyes.  And we have not even snatched a glimpse yet.