If you were
to come over to my house right now and ask about our summer vacation on the
north shore of Lake Superior, you would get to see two things: Pictures and rocks.
Everywhere we went, we found rocks. The beaches were rocky. The hiking trails were rocky. The rivers were full of rocks. In fact, there were so many rocks that I hardly paid any attention to them. After a while, they all looked the same.
However, my wife and daughters kept picking them up and saying, "Oooh…look at this one". To my surprise, rocks that looked very plain and ordinary on the ground were actually very interesting up close. A grey, boring rock often had beautiful lines of colour in it. Some of the rocks were broken and though the outside was plain, the inside was very cool. You had to really look, but almost every rock had something interesting about it. Several were so beautiful that they found their way back to our house and are now on display.
As for the pictures, the same thing holds true. We would be hiking along and I would look back and see one of my daughters taking a picture of a weed, or a stick, or a tree and I would think, “Wa?” One time we were driving past a row of mailboxes at the side of the road and all three of them yelled, “Stop!” Then they all jumped out and started talking pictures of these things while I sat there thinking, “Why are you bothering?” The pictures, though, are beautiful! We each looked at the same stuff, but they saw, and then captured, the beauty that I did not see.
My point: Sometimes we overlook things that are beautiful, interesting and good simply because we do not see their value at the start.
Unfortunately, I think many people do that with God and Spiritual things. Everyone has had some experience with “churchy” things (at funerals, weddings or maybe a service at Christmas) and many see those experiences in the same way I looked at those rocks on the beach. They look and say, “I just don’t think it is that interesting or important”.
But maybe, just like with the rocks or the pictures, a closer look will reveal the beauty you may have missed at first glance.
Jesus once said that finding God’s kingdom was like finding a treasure in a field or like find a very
valuable pearl. Once you see it you will give anything to have it (Matthew 13:44-46).
The wonderful message of God is worth a second look.
Everywhere we went, we found rocks. The beaches were rocky. The hiking trails were rocky. The rivers were full of rocks. In fact, there were so many rocks that I hardly paid any attention to them. After a while, they all looked the same.
However, my wife and daughters kept picking them up and saying, "Oooh…look at this one". To my surprise, rocks that looked very plain and ordinary on the ground were actually very interesting up close. A grey, boring rock often had beautiful lines of colour in it. Some of the rocks were broken and though the outside was plain, the inside was very cool. You had to really look, but almost every rock had something interesting about it. Several were so beautiful that they found their way back to our house and are now on display.
As for the pictures, the same thing holds true. We would be hiking along and I would look back and see one of my daughters taking a picture of a weed, or a stick, or a tree and I would think, “Wa?” One time we were driving past a row of mailboxes at the side of the road and all three of them yelled, “Stop!” Then they all jumped out and started talking pictures of these things while I sat there thinking, “Why are you bothering?” The pictures, though, are beautiful! We each looked at the same stuff, but they saw, and then captured, the beauty that I did not see.
My point: Sometimes we overlook things that are beautiful, interesting and good simply because we do not see their value at the start.
Unfortunately, I think many people do that with God and Spiritual things. Everyone has had some experience with “churchy” things (at funerals, weddings or maybe a service at Christmas) and many see those experiences in the same way I looked at those rocks on the beach. They look and say, “I just don’t think it is that interesting or important”.
But maybe, just like with the rocks or the pictures, a closer look will reveal the beauty you may have missed at first glance.
Jesus once said that finding God’s kingdom was like finding a treasure in a field or like find a very
valuable pearl. Once you see it you will give anything to have it (Matthew 13:44-46).
The wonderful message of God is worth a second look.
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