Looking Up

I walk into church and it's hard not to be amazed by the awesome Christians I see.  I marvel at their goodness.  I marvel at their beauty.  I marvel at their devotion to something outside of themselves, outside of the comfortable and normal and expected.

It's a little intimidating at times.

I find myself wondering at their backgrounds.  Surely, I think they must have been raised in homes where scripture was studied every night, where prayer was as easy and natural as breathing.  They must have lived and breathed Jesus from the moment they were born.  I imagine lovely lives where they moved, walked in a cloud of love and goodness and kindness all the days of their lovely lives.  It's easy to think this of people who do and say amazing thing, who live amazing lives.

Yet again and again and again I am proven wrong.

Again and again and again God shows me that He takes what is broken, what is unlovely, what is seemingly useless and ugly and says I MAKE ALL THINGS NEW.  That the loveliness comes from God and not from our own efforts.  That those people who are living amazing lives come from dark and ugly places and that it is only through GOD that their lives are made lovely.  That every time THEY tried to do something amazing or something good or tried to make things right that they failed because they were trying to do it ALONE.

Life cannot be lived ALONE.

With God comes light.  With God comes life.  With God comes love.  With God comes FULLNESS.  Let us live our lives not looking to each other, not looking to ourselves for loveliness.  But let's look UP to God, to see all the beauty and goodness and love that life has to offer.  Let us look UP to find acceptance and awareness.  Let us look UP so that we all may live amazing lives within the FULLNESS of God.

I want to be one of those people that cause others to look UP.  You know what I am talking about?  When you see someone standing and pointing and looking up at the sky?  Your natural reaction is to go over and look too, to wonder what are they looking at.  I want others to walk over to my life and think what the heck is she looking up and in looking up with me say.......ahhhh, now I see, now I get it.  I see God.   I want them to see God.  I want them to experience the wonder and beauty that comes from seeing the living God.

And, again, HUGE HUGS to Jason and Suzi Lantz who always cause me to look up at our wondrous God.