CR550N

As I was driving down the highway today I became acutely aware. . .

1. There is such a wonderful color and beauty which surrounded me in nature. Since it is autumn, the various colors that are otherwise hidden within the leaves are able to emerge and display such a magnificence. And this is all part of a dying experience. For some this already sounds too morbid, but I believe this is because we have too easily lost a proper appreciation for the seasons of life - it is not that those who see beauty in the process of dying are particularly warped.

2. There seems to be an equation to spiritual existence. Yet this is not some mathematical economy which may be experienced as a formula in which lives are placed in a cosmic algebraic recipe and have all turned out. There is faith and hope. . .faith is built upon that which God has done in the past and hope is looking forward to the future. Yet there are three that remain: love is that which enables us to move from faith to hope in a three-part pilgrimage.

c. Trinity gains us an understanding of reality (it is the ultimate reality). Three persons, one essence. Bound together by an eternal and perfect love. Which means (among MANY other things) that Jesus and the Spirit and the Father are connected through love. We are told to display love toward each other and toward this loving perfection. The only possible way we can experience love is through the Spirit, which is the presence of Jesus who has enabled us to enter into the throne room of his heavenly Father. Could it be that the love we share carries the very presence of Christ? Perhaps even the heavenly glory of the Father?

4. Have you ever stopped to realize how close we are to the eternal? Our world is marked by so much that is temporary, yet the activity of grasping for these straws somehow binds us to that which will never end. We try to hold on to this life - sometimes for good and sometimes because we can't help ourselves - and we find that everything slips away from our reach. Even the most spiritually momentus occasions can not be preserved, yet we are still reaching for them. Perhaps our lives are indeed sacraments: outward signs of an inward grace. Sometimes we might be sacramenting the wrong direction.



four roads: one intersection: in more ways than one. . .




“Gratitude is a spiritual virtue that opens the door of the soul to the world around us.” *



C. Hassell Bullock, Encountering the Book of Psalms (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004), 160.