More than a year ago now, I was in physical therapy for vestibular rehab. Your vestibular system includes your eyes, your brain, your ears (of course), basically any part of you that tells you where you are in relation to everything around you. It keeps you balanced and upright.
Sometimes, the physical therapist explained to me, your vestibular system gets weak. For example, you discover one day that every time you lean forward you get dizzy, so you stop leaning forward. But because you stop leaning forward, you deny your body the opportunity to adapt and correct for whatever's wrong.
By avoiding the problem, you are prolonging it.
And so over the past year I have worked at forcing myself to do things like looking down or up long past the time that it starts getting uncomfortable.
It's hard and it's scary.
365 Days of Hope has helped me with that. You may look at the close up pictures I have taken of birds and think, because of the perspective, that I was standing only a few feet from them, but actually, most of these birds have been standing at the very top of trees, thirty feet above me and thirty to fifty feet away from me on the horizontal axis.
When I take their picture, I stare up for a long time.
And in doing so I am strengthened--slowly, but progressively.
It strikes me that when we worship God, when we are moved by the spirit, that we frequently look upward.
Why?
When we were kids, we imagined God living in the clouds, but as adults we know that God is everywhere, standing right beside us, sitting there next to us.
So why do we look up?
This morning, before the church service, I began my walk on the grounds at Hope with my camera in hand. I had no idea what I was going to take a picture of. I was worried that it was still too dark to get a good picture of anything.
And then I looked up and saw a bird I had not seen at Hope.
It was an osprey. I had seen ospreys before, but never this close. It was massive. I had no idea it was such an incredibly large bird. It lorded over the trees and right before it took off, it let out a cry like I had never heard, a loud, piercing siren of a whistle. It drowned out all other calls. The mourning doves sat calmly on the fence, silent. It wasn't until the osprey left that the other birds began to chirp.
It was a jaw dropping, beautiful sight.
It was one of those moments that makes you feel so small.
And it is why, during passion-filled worship, that we turn to the skies.
Because God is in the clouds, but He is also beside us and in front of us and all around us. He is everywhere. He is not like us. He does not take up the nineteen inches or so of space in the airplane seat. He takes up every molecule and atom of the universe.
And we are so small.
And His love is so vast.
How blessed ... how blessed are we.
Sometimes, the physical therapist explained to me, your vestibular system gets weak. For example, you discover one day that every time you lean forward you get dizzy, so you stop leaning forward. But because you stop leaning forward, you deny your body the opportunity to adapt and correct for whatever's wrong.
By avoiding the problem, you are prolonging it.
And so over the past year I have worked at forcing myself to do things like looking down or up long past the time that it starts getting uncomfortable.
It's hard and it's scary.
365 Days of Hope has helped me with that. You may look at the close up pictures I have taken of birds and think, because of the perspective, that I was standing only a few feet from them, but actually, most of these birds have been standing at the very top of trees, thirty feet above me and thirty to fifty feet away from me on the horizontal axis.
When I take their picture, I stare up for a long time.
And in doing so I am strengthened--slowly, but progressively.
It strikes me that when we worship God, when we are moved by the spirit, that we frequently look upward.
Why?
When we were kids, we imagined God living in the clouds, but as adults we know that God is everywhere, standing right beside us, sitting there next to us.
So why do we look up?
This morning, before the church service, I began my walk on the grounds at Hope with my camera in hand. I had no idea what I was going to take a picture of. I was worried that it was still too dark to get a good picture of anything.
And then I looked up and saw a bird I had not seen at Hope.
It was an osprey. I had seen ospreys before, but never this close. It was massive. I had no idea it was such an incredibly large bird. It lorded over the trees and right before it took off, it let out a cry like I had never heard, a loud, piercing siren of a whistle. It drowned out all other calls. The mourning doves sat calmly on the fence, silent. It wasn't until the osprey left that the other birds began to chirp.
It was a jaw dropping, beautiful sight.
It was one of those moments that makes you feel so small.
And it is why, during passion-filled worship, that we turn to the skies.
Because God is in the clouds, but He is also beside us and in front of us and all around us. He is everywhere. He is not like us. He does not take up the nineteen inches or so of space in the airplane seat. He takes up every molecule and atom of the universe.
And we are so small.
And His love is so vast.
How blessed ... how blessed are we.
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