A Greeting Card From God

Have you ever had one of those days where all you want to do is stand outside and feel the sun? You allow the cool breeze to cross your face, and listen to the sounds of nature around you. You open your eyes and stare at the breathtaking beauty around you: trees and grass, birds and squirrels. You hear the laughter of children playing. Feel the arms of your husband or wife around you. Focus outward, to your friends and neighbors, going about their lives.

There is so much beauty, just standing on your porch, when you allow what has become commonplace to be seen instead as the gift of a benevolent Creator. We can look at the world around us as being more or less the same day after day. A living drudgery of the same scenery over and over. Or, we can view God's work with a Genesis 1 vision: an understanding of the care with which God crafted everything we see.

We can search in the tiniest of details -- the cracks in the bark of trees, the variations in every flower and blade of grass, the instinctual magnificence of the creatures, from insects to birds to household pets, which surround us -- and find in them the glory of God.

I want to encourage you to meditate today on God's creation. Read through Genesis 1, and look around you as you read it, taking in every piece of what He built as you read about its formation.

Start today at the beginning, and see the sky, not as something that may or may not drop more snow or rain -- not with a view of what it will mean for your day -- but as the first part of a wondrous work of living art: a love note from God to you. Start by looking up and remember: In the beginning, God created the Heavens...