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| IHM, Monroe |
I've been feeling small lately. This is good.
Someone peering out a window in a jet 35,000 feet in the air would not notice me, no matter how I jump, wave my arms, and yell.
We live on three and a half acres, in a farmhouse built in 1860, on a river that flows into Lake Erie. On my riding mower, it all seems big. But it's not, relatively speaking. To call us small is to exaggerate.
We cut grass, paint our bedrooms, shop for food, laugh, love, experience pain, and weep on a pale blue dot. I think about this.
I looked out my second floor home office early this morning and saw an osprey land on the tip of one of the tall Norway spruces in our front yard. An osprey is as big as a bald eagle. I know this by experience, as bald eagles regularly fly low over our property. The spruce is tall. The osprey is big. But compared to what? The Eagle Nebula is 5.13 light years across. The three of us - spruce, osprey, me - are among the tiniest objects in the universe.
If size matters, then we don't.
When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,
The moon and the stars, which You have ordained,
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What is man that You are mindful of him,
And the son of man that You visit him?
And yet...
For You have made him a little lower than the angels,
And You have crowned him with glory and honor.
(Psalm 8)
You and I not only matter, we are the high point of God's handiwork.
Lately I've had two things going in my mind:
1) My tiny self relative to all things that are; and
2) a God-placed crown of glory and honor upon me, exalted above all God's creation, even above the Eagle Nebula.
My two books are:
My two books are:
Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God (May 2016)
Leading the Presence-Driven Church (January 2018)
I am now writing:
How God Changes the Human Heart
Technology and Spiritual Formation
Linda and I plan to co-write our book on Relationships
