This post was written in December of 2006: 

A few days ago, I was on a lunch break from work at a fast food restaurant waiting on my food when something caught my eye.  There was a little boy about 2 years old with his mother, and they were looking at the fish tank.  I have gone to that restaurant countless times and seem to never notice the fish.  This little boy, however, was totally infatuated with the fish in the tank.  He was counting, with the help of his mom, the fish in the tank over and over and over.  He seemed so into the fish that he never lost interest in doing the exact thing over and over again.  I think that as we grow older and more educated we lose sight of this childlike wonder.  We so easily brush by the little things in life that God has given us to enjoy.  These things are not just given for our enjoyment, but they exist to reflect the beauty and wonder of their creator.  The psalmist said that “the heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalms 19: 1).  When we slow down enough to glimpse the beauty that out Creator has designed, we can praise God for the beauty that we see.  I think that part of living a Christian life is to be looking for beauty in the midst of a world full of sin.  Beauty can be found even in the most unlikely places.  So, we should slow down enough to look for beauty in our world and praise the creative Designer of that beauty for what we see.   Brain McLaren puts it this way “whenever we here a song or see a scene in a movie – whenever we enjoy good art or good cooking or find ourselves in good architecture or read a good paragraph in literature – whenever this happens, we celebrate that goodness, enjoy it, savor it, and most of all thank God for it” (italics mine).  Living like this will help us to be more thankful and live the gratefulness of Thanksgiving day throughout the rest of the year.

I have had the privilege of spending the last two days in Panama City.  It has been an interesting trip in that I have been surrounded by God’s beautiful creation.  There is something about spending time watching the sunset over the horizon and then sitting on the beach with your feet in the water being lapped over by waves.  I look at the beauty and design of the world especially the beach, and the only way that I can respond is in worship.  It is so neat to me that the closer I get to God’s beautiful creation, the closer I feel to God.  The interesting part of this whole experience is that in my breaks from the beauty of God’s creation I am reading a book by one of the world most well-known atheists, that proposes that God clearly does not exist but rather the world functions by the evolutionary process of natural selection.  As I was walking on the beach tonight and looking at the sunset, I could not help but think of the author of the book I am reading and other educated scientists who propose evolution and natural selection as the controllers of the universe and how they would respond to this glorious picture of beauty.  Let me paint you two pictures of this picture and let you see which picture is more beautiful:

Picture 1 (The Perspective of an Evolutionary Scientist): “There is the sun.  It is a collection of chemical gasses that are operating at a specific temperature that is the necessary temperature to allow the process of evolution to have functioned on the planet earth.  The earth is set in a rotation around the sun that is fundamentally necessary for the earth to have sustained life.  It is just a hot ball of gasses fulfilling its function in the overarching cycle of evolutionary natural selection.”

Picture 2 (My Perspective as a Worshipper): “There is the sun in all of its beauty.  I see the sun setting over the horizon in a beautiful way which the Author of Beauty created it to be.  It is their performing its lone purpose which is to display the beauty and give the world a glimpse of the glory of God.  The Psalmist had it right when he said that ‘the heavens declare the glory of God.’ I will join with all of creation in praising the name of my glorious God!”

I think that we can get to a place that we become so educated that we miss the beauty of God’s creation.  Worship thrives on wonder.  I do not want to become so educated that I miss the wonder and beauty of God’s creation.  As the Psalmist said “the heavens are declaring,” the question is are we listening!

I am reading through a book called Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith by Rob Bell. This has really been causing me to stop and think about many different issues that Rob raises in the book. One thing that he said in regard to missions really struck me:

“So the issue (of missions) isn’t so much taking Jesus to people who don’t have Him, but going to a place and pointing out to the people there the creative, life-giving God who is already present in our midst.” - Rob Bell in Velvit Elvis

This statement was almost shocking. So often growing up in church, you would hear the classic missionary story of these people called by God to bring Him to a heathen land that had never heard His name. This statement flies in the face of that mindset, but after reflecting on it, I think that Rob is onto something. When we have the standard missions mindset of the gospel being ours to bring, we put the focus entirely on us and put us in a place where we are almost above those to whom we are seeking to impact. The midset pictured in this statement totally refocuses missions. It brings it to our job as a missionary sharing the gospel to people becomes pointing out God as the source of all beauty and order that the psalmist said that the heavens were declaring the greatness of. God is the source of all order and beauty and the reason the universe fits together. We are simply to be willing to point to the order and beauty in order to show people how to have a realationship with the Creator of all that beauty and order. When we are just pointing out the God that is there, it takes so much of the pressure off of us to explain this incomprehensible God to others. What a great privelege we have to look for opportunities to introduce people to our awesome and loving God!