Beautiful Things

Yesterday, as the rain fell outside, I sat at my kitchen table, sipping on my coffee, reading my devotional, and looking out my big kitchen window. All I could see was overgrown grass, gray sky, and invisible rain drops splashing into a puddle. My kids sat in the living room watching some kind of behind the scenes feature on Alvin & The Chipmunks: The Squeakuel. My wife was at the gym. Overall, the day feltquiet. Contemplative. Serene.

My devotional is Jesus Calling. Yesterday's entry read in part:

My world is filled with beautiful things; they are meant to be pointers to Me, reminders of My abiding Presence.

Watching the invisible rain crash into the puddle, I thought of what Jesus said: He makes the rain fall on the just and unjust alike. Sounds simple (I mean, have you ever seen rain avoid a person?), but it says a lot about God. Depending on how you view rain, it's either God blessing everyone equally or God allowing hardship equally. You could certainly drill down deeper on the implications, but at face value, the fairness of God in both good and bad is contained within that one, simple act.

It rains on everyone sometime.

Thinking about that, I imagined that in places where it rarely rains, water falling from heaven seems like an enormous blessing, an occasion to sit down and breathe deeply and silently give praise that a need has been met. I would imagine in places like that no one grumbles about the inconvenience, or heaves a sigh at having to rearrange their plans for the day. I would imagine that on a day like today, they just sit back and watch the rain fall with wonder for however long it might last. Each drop seen as precious. Each rain-filled minute a gift.

Meanwhile, I look at the rain and think, "Man - people will be driving like idiots today."

Perspective. We all need it sometimes. In fact, a lot of us need a lot of the time - the ability to put things into the right context, the right worldview. Usually the problem is fairly simple: our perspective is myopic, limited to the only creature in the universe that we feel matters.

Ourselves.

Today, let's take a minute and expand that view to at least the people closest to us, whether that's family or friends or co-workers or the stranger on the street. Let's make an active choice to see the world not through our narrow lens of self-satisfaction but instead through a lens of wonder and awe and awareness. The rain falls on us all, no one better than the other, so let's choose to see the blessing in that today. Let's choose to see benevolence and grace instead of inconvenience and bother. As Garrison Keillor once wrote, in a "News From Lake Woebegon" sketch for Prairie Home Companion, "the Lord offers Himself to us just the same, whether we notice it or not."

Today, let's take notice.