Attention, all! See the marvels of God

Attention, all! See the marvels of God! He plants flowers and trees all over the earth, Bans war from pole to pole, breaks all the weapons across his knee. “Step out of the traffic! Take a long, loving look at me, your High God, above politics, above everything.”

Psalm 46:8 – The Message

My verse for the day. And as I read and ponder, my view for the day.

Beauty: Gods beauty. It isn’t hard to see God in his creativity. It isn’t hard to see God in the way he moves the clouds and stirs the water. It’s pretty easy to see God in a wee baby… especially when they look at you with wonder. It’s the stepping out of traffic that I sometimes have a problem with. I love to travel. I could easily be packed and ready to go in 2 minutes if someone said, “do you want to go?” I am not sure why I love to go. But what I don’t love is along the way somewhere in the midst of ecstasy, beauty and adventure is traffic. I spent part of last week in Denver. Denver has traffic. If you have to go anywhere north and south or east and west you probably have to encounter I25 and in the dictionary when you look it up there is a picture of traffic beside the word. Traffic irritates even the calmest of people. We all want to know why we are sitting still or crawling at a speed I could actually walk faster than. Horns honking, people losing their bodily control and waving hands at you that by the look on their face you interpret as not happy campers. People trying to get into your lane, others not slowing enough, fender benders, people keeping you from merging into their lane and eternity looming with us sitting perturbed. We don’t handle traffic well.

So the things we don’t handle well, God uses as illustrations so we get the picture. God says, ” step out of the traffic.”

If you remember your last traffic jam, getting out isn’t always easy. Getting out also means you lose your place in line: the very line you are silently calling names and tapping your foot at.

If we were like God, we could be above the traffic and see the accident. We could see the pile up with 2 very upset people. We could see the stuff that gets us so worked up. Admit it; I am not the only one who doesn’t like traffic jams.

God is simply trying to get me to see the bigger picture. Sometimes stepping out of the traffic or life is when God can talk to us. It’s a time when other things aren’t taking away our attention from God.

I had the wonderful opportunity this past week aside from the traffic to sit on the couch and visit with old friends, sit in the mountains in a hot tub and watch the sunset and see Baihley get her Masters Plus Degree from Denver University. To do those things I had to endure the traffic of life. But when I stepped out of the traffic God gave me a few ” ahh” moments with him. The key is recognizing when God is saying step out and then doing it. May you find traffic a bit less stressful and may you step out of the traffic long enough to take a long, loving look at God and what he is trying to tell you.