Three more weeks until I’m on a plane to the opposite side of the world.
For starters—you know how it goes. I apologize for a) not ever knowing how to start these things b) not blogging in a while because I never know how to start these things.
I feel like I have feelings and thoughts and insights just staked up in my head, practically overflowing from the last time I’ve written a blog. But, of course, it’s hard putting the right words to this kind of stuff.
With the little time I have left in the states I’ve been focusing on how I can deepen my relationship with the Lord so I’m better prepared overseas. I practically have a laundry list of ways I’ve been asking God to grow and stretch me—all of which can be summarized up into one request: teach me to have a heart like Jesus’s.
And you guessed it, God showed me his heart in a surprising way (what’s new)
I think there are countless ways to feel close to the Lord: prayer, reading scripture, singing, being creative, etc.
Personally, I feel closest to God in the outdoors. In the real world. Not the city, but the world that he made. There’s something special about witnessing the majesty of our Father’s love by looking out into a valley from the top of a mountain or seeing his divine, artistic eye in each sunset. Nothing is quite like it, and it teaches me how very creative and detailed our Father is. How he can effortlessly take my breath away. And how incredibly loved we are by him because he spoke it all into existence for us.
I was at the top of a hill, awestruck at the masterpiece of trees and green everything surrounding me, and I thought to myself “God, it doesn’t get much better than this. How could somebody look at what I’m looking at, and believe that you aren’t real?”.
There was a moment of silence and I felt a tug on my heart.
I heard the Lord respond, “Steph, it does get better than this. You are better than this. You and your neighbors and your acquaintances and the people you do not and will not ever know. They’re all better than this. I declared you my masterpiece, not some silly view!”
To think, all my life I’ve never enjoyed the city or big crowds because I just couldn’t stand being around a lot of people, and that’s the very reason the Lord delights in these things. I’ve always seen it as human-thought versus God’s-thoughts. Being in a big city, you experience everything that came to be because of the human mind. Cars, buildings, roads. They were all someone’s thoughts before they came to be. But out in nature, the water, the mountains, the flowers, they’re all a product of God’s mind.
We are also a product of God’s mind. We are the favored, image-bearing product of God’s mighty handiwork.
He declares us both his masterpiece and work in progress.
And it is because of this that the Lord politely put me in my place. I asked how anyone could look out into nature and not believe in him, and he fervently responded with “because they can go to a city and see what truly has my heart—my children.”
Imagine this: long lines, bumper-to-bumper traffic, crowded restaurants. God delights in the sight of these more than he delights in the prettiest, most magnificent view. And it’s simply because of the fact that he loves us.
It’s always been about us. From the beginning of time, to Jesus’s death and resurrection, to now. It’s all for us because we are deeply loved and desired by our Father.
May the mountains and rivers and trees and sunsets shout his greatness.
May we, his most prized possession, shout his greatness louder.
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I went out to the city a few of days ago. Wasn’t that bad.
