Amazed Again

Today is a beautiful February day in the Indianan planes. There was frost out this morning, but the afternoon has proven to be quite glorious. Delightful. The sun is shining, and my ears have heard the long-forgotten melody of birds whistling their songs of joy through the air. How I have missed spring and summer and autumn; winter is death.

For me, spring represents spiritual life. For the past few years, I have made a habit of taking my guitar outside and singing in the cool wind. I don't play many songs I've written or sing about abstractions. It's all worship. And today I did it again, for the first time in quite a long time.

How is it that we so easily forget the sound of birds cheeping? Why does sin look so pleasurable at times? Why does our faith grow so numb and dim and cold that we want something more? What is my problem?

I have ceased to be amazed.

This is the problem.

God never becomes boring. He is the One who created butterflies and lilies and laughing children and wallabies and nebulae. He hand-made every fingerprint and fashioned every son and daughter. He is the reason we have blood vessels, fingernails, nerves, tibiae (hmm, it's tibiae, not tibias), and salivary glands. He's the God who created fun (thanks, KB).

So how can it be that I am bored? The problem is in me. Listen to God's words in Psalm 50:

For every beast of the forest is Mine,The cattle on a thousand hills.I know every bird of the mountains,And everything that moves in the field is Mine.If I were hungry I would not tell you,For the world is Mine, and all it contains.Shall I eat the flesh of bullsOr drink the blood of male goats?Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgivingAnd pay your vows to the Most High;Call upon Me in the day of trouble;I shall rescue you, and you will honor Me (vv. 10-15).

Now would be the time to say, Wow! This planet, full with 7,000,000,000 (seven billion) people, is God's. All of it. Every inch. Every beast of every field, all cattle of every farm. The thousands of blackbirds that will fly over my house this spring belong to God.

God has spoken: "You thought that I was just like you" (v. 21).

I stand corrected.

I stand amazed.

The reality of the holiness of God is that He is not like man (Num. 23:19). And therefore, the reality of our sin is that we have made Him into our own image.

Let us return. Let us see Him for who He really is. And let us be amazed again.