Taste and See...

Yesterday our family experienced epic moments of simplicity.

I'm reading a book called "This Beautiful Mess" in which the author (Rick McKinnley) speaks of the paradox of the Now & Not Yet-ness of the Kingdom of God. His message heavily rests in ways we experience the Kingdom now- in this lifetime, while the Kingdom is Not Yet. (Jesus said "the Kingdom of God is within you.") The way we interact with this message affects how we interact with our world and the people in it.

So today, on our scenic route home from meeting, I pondered and bantered with Seth over the various ways God allows us to experience Him and feel Him and know he exists. 

Here are our musings. Not all are true for everyone. We're all unique.

We can experience God through the natural world; through rivers and woods, through mountains and hiking trails, through star gazing on summer nights, or catching fireflies with our children. We can experience him while we fish, or boat, or run by the seashore. We can see his beauty and his intricate, perfect composition of the cosmos by peeking through telescopes. God is in nature.

We can experience God through our family; through the love a parent is struck with when first meeting their new son or daughter. "Wow. God loves me like that," were some of my first parental musings. It's a staggering love and so deep and powerful it's impossible for me to describe it fully. God is in family.

We can experience God through relationships; through close friends, familiar strangers and old acquaintances, the barista who works the Sunday morning shift at the coffee house, the woman who held the door open for you when your hands were full of babies, diaper bags and groceries, through the people in our church and our next door neighbor, the voice on the other end of your business call. God is in people.

We can experience God through meditation; through careful consideration and reflection on our life. Through questioning and rationalizing. We can wonder and pause. God is in our thoughts.

We can experience God through play; through long rambling walks or quick runs, through marathons and living room dance parties, through amateur sports or the yoga class at the gym. During afternoons in your friend's pool, or kicking the ball around for the dog, chasing birds on the beach, creating towers of blocks for the sole purpose of crashing them to the floor again. God is in play.

We can experience God through creativity;  through crafts, arts & craftsmanship. While piecing together a quilt or crocheting squares for a blanket. While we create works of pottery, or build playgrounds in our backyard or reviving an old car, or while making impressionistic paintings of the scene before our eyes. If we write poetry, tell stories or act out dramas from long ago, God is in creativity.

We can experience God through children; through their laughter and persistence, through their unquenchable desire to know, whenever they accept and love regardless, their complete innocence and blindness to our social rules, the way that they seem to default back to happiness and playfulness and immediately forgive wrong-doings in others. God is in children.

We can experience God through music; he moves us with melodies and tunes. Music inspires emotions within us and speaks when words fail. Music gives simple words new life and truer meaning. It brings us together despite all flavors of differences. God is in music.

We can experience God through care-taking; through service to others (organized and unstructured alike), through keeping chickens, putting the cat in at night, through work with the local soup kitchen or     cleaning Chapel floors. Anytime we help or assist another person or living being, whether directly, in a hands-on approach, or by ensuring our kitchen table is cleaned for their use. God is in caring.

We can experience God through learning; when we read historical accounts from eras now past, when we study biology and earth sciences, learning about lava rocks and geography, through various cultures and while striving to understand the perfection of mathematics. God is in learning. 

We can experience God through gardening; being connected to the earth and our food, through the realization that life springs from death, through the patterns of sowing, growing and harvesting, through a reliance on the weather and the natural world: the sunshine, the rain, the bugs, the birds, the earthworms, the dirt. God is in the garden.

God has given all of us unique, quirky, independent individuals, countless moments of epic simplicity, to experience Him, to see His beauty, plan, and love for us. Living a life for God and allowing all of our senses to be aware of Him is living a full life. 

"Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good."

Psalm 34:8a

[Jesus] came that [we] may have life, and have it abundantly.

John 10:10b