“Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees takes off his shoes.” ~Elizabeth Browning
How often do we miss what God has for us because we are distracted by the ordinary? Better yet, how many times do we miss God in the ordinary because we have convinced ourselves that somehow we have lost our way and need to find that grass that is greener on the other side of the distant fence?
We human beings are worried about too many things that really don’t matter, and too often avoid those things that matter the most. In a driven, media saturated society, it is easy to “run out the clock” in our daily routine as we wait for the next exciting event we have planned on the weekend of the holiday. Instead of being “stuck in the moment” we are stuck in a time warp of a future, yet unfulfilled, desire.
I have a suggestion: stop, look and listen. God is speaking. Every moment declares His presence and His purpose. But unless we stop, look and listen to what He is trying to say, we will miss it. The repeated occurence of such lost opportunity can result in a loss of vision.
Author and pastor Mark Batterson hits the nail on the head when he writes:
“There is a miraculous quality to new experiences that makes time stand still. God has wired us in such a way that we’re hypersensitive to new stimuli, but over time the cataracts of the customary cloud our vision. We lose our awareness of the miraculous, and with it, our awe of God.” (The Grave Robber)
Prayer and worship bathe us in the eternal awareness of the God who is there. We are healed of our blindness and transformed into His image.
“Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.” ~Matthew 6:10
“We can all draw close to him with the veil removed from our faces. And with no veil we all become like mirrors who brightly reflect the glory of the Lord Jesus. We are being transfigured into his very image as we move from one brighter level of glory to another.