ALIVE TO GOD, OTHERS, AND LIFE

"The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard. Their measuring line goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them he has set a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamberand, like a strong man, runs its course with joy..."
Psalm 19:1-5 ESV

I beleive that the greatest spiritual discipline there is, is the discipline of awareness, of spiritual sight. I call it being alive to God, alive to others, alive to His creation, and alive to life.. Are you? Do you see? We often times are not alive because we are so busy, driven, goal and future oriented that we completely dead to all that is around us. Others of us spend so much time focusing in ourselves that we miss the sacred moments of grace and life all around us. We are not alone. Jacob said, "Surely the Lord was in this place and i did not see (Genesis 49:16).

T.S. Elliot wrote,
"Earth is crammed with heaven and every bush is the dwelling place of God,
but only those who see take off their shoes,
the rest just sit around and pluck blackberries."

We miss so much every moment don't we? Oh how we waste and lose so many precious moments in this short life while just sitting around plucking the blackberries of boredom, familiarity, ingratitude, self preoccupation, and spiirtual dullness. Oh to see and live!

Are you alive, amazed, astonished at God, His creation, and life? James 1:17 tells us, "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change." God offers us one of the greatest gifts—amazement at what we see.

I am so thankful for men such as C.S. Lewis, John Piper, and his mentor Clyde Kilby(A friend and contemporary of C.S.Lewis), who have been given to us by God to awaken our sense of sight.They have taught me there is always more to see in what I see

John Piper says of Clyde Kilby that he,

"Pled with us to stop seeking mental health in the mirror of self-analysis, but instead to drink in the remedies of God in nature. He was not naive. He knew of sin. He knew of the necessity of redemption in Christ. But he would have said that Christ purchased new eyes for us as well as new hearts.His plea was that we stop being unamazed by the strange glory of ordinary things"

The Psalmist tells us that every day God is speaking through the ordinary things of His creation (That is , if you can ever call creation ordinary!)."Day unto day pours forth speech, and night unto night declares knowledge." The observation here very simply is that knowledge of God can in one sense come through nature, day and night. At night, the night sky speaks. In the day, the day sky speaks. Or to be precise, speech pours forth. Nature does not whisper—it shouts, and it shouts continually.

How many of us are impressed with watching on HD big screen televisions the series from the BBC called Planet Earth? We were all impressed with the amazing photography of the world of nature.I have heard so many enthusiastic oooohs and ahhhhs from people who watched this series. What is ironic to me is that we will watch it and then an hour later walk outside into a three dimensional drama ten million times bigger,graphic,more unpredictable and suspenseful, and hear not a single exclamation. Why?

Clyde Kilby, gave this answer (quoting John Piper):

The fall of man can hardly be more forcefully felt than simply in noting what we all do with a fresh snowfall or the first buds of spring. On Monday they fill us with delight and meaning and on Tuesday we ignore them. No amount of shouting to us that this is all wrong changes the fact for very long . . . Only some aesthetic power which is akin to God's own creativity has the capability for renewal, for giving us the power to see.

He thinks the reason we pay so little attention to God's omnitheatre is that we are fallen, sinful creatures. And I agree, because I cannot imagine that the angels in heaven get tired of God's beauty or that God himself grows weary of the beauty of his Son. There is in heaven an ever renewed energy of perception and enjoyment. But fallen man is plagued with the proverb: "Familiarity breeds contempt."

But surely redemption means that we will be freed from that proverb. If we aren't, there can be no such thing as heaven but only a hell of increasing contemptuousness. And since our redemption has already begun in this age, Christians ought to have better eyes than people in general for seeing the knowledge that every day and night pours forth. We ought to be the kind of people who walk out of the house in the morning with the same sense of suspense and expectancy with which we turn on our HD's and watch Planet Earth!

C.S. Lewis is also one who was so alive and aware of life all around him. John Piper writes:

Lewis’s keen penetrating sense of his own heart’s aching for Joy, combined with his utter amazement at the sheer, objective realness of things other than himself, has over and over awakened me from the slumbers of self-absorption to see and savor the world and through the world, the Maker of the world. And this sense of wonder at what is—really is—has carried over into doctrine, and the gospel in particular...Lewis gave me, and continues to give me, an intense sense of the astonishing “realness? of things. He had the ability to see and feel what most of us see and do not see. He had what Alan Jacobs called “omnivorous attentiveness.”


Don't you just love that phrase "omnivorous attentiveness"? What this can do for you is amazing. What would my life be like if I wake up in the morning and to be aware of the firmness of the mattress, the warmth of the sun’s rays, the sight of my beautiful wife next to me, the sound of the birds singing, the coldness of the wooden floor, the wetness of the water in the sink, the sheer being of things (quiddity as C.S. Lewis called it). What if I was not just to be aware but full of wonder and amazement that water is wet; that the sky is blue, that the trees in my back yard are green, that the sound of the birds is melodic. None of this had to be. If there were no such thing as any of those and one day some one showed them to you, you would simply be astonished.

Oh how we need to become alive to life! To look at the sunrise and with say with an amazed smile, “God did it again!” I want to see what is there in the world—things which if we did not have them, we would pay a million dollars to have, but having them, ignore. I want to be convicted of my callous inattention and inability to enjoy God’s daily gifts. I want God to awaken my dazed soul so that the realities of life and of God and heaven and hell are seen and felt. I want to God to effect my eyes in such a way that life and this extraordinary world is a precious gift.

Finally, C.S.Lewis has awakened me to seeing people with new eyes. Sometimes, we get so "familiar" with those we know or are close to, that we stop "seeing" them and having gratitude for them. Often times this awakening happens after someone who we knew has died. But I want to be alive now to people and especially my family, friends, and fellow Christan's. I want to rise above my petty complaints and see people—at least from time to time—as the staggering wonders that they are in the image of God.

Listen to what C.S. Lewis says about seeing people that has helped me so much:

"It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. . . . There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors."

My prayer for you and me is that God will give us fresh, new eyes to see him, others, and His world with childlike awe and wonder for what is right in front of our eyes. May we stop picking blackberries and take off our shoes because every moment is truly sacred and we stand on holy ground.

Clyde Kilby resolved:

"I shall open my eyes and ears. Once every day I shall simply stare at a tree, a flower, a cloud, or a person. I shall not then be concerned at all to ask what they are but simply be glad that they are. I shall joyfully allow them the mystery of what Lewis calls their "divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic" existence."


Learning to see,
Pastor Bill