MERRY MONDAY BY PARRIS BAILEY-
Job 42:5 “I have heard thee by the hearing of the ear; but now mine eye sees thee”.
Early every morning I take my dog “Renny” out for his walk. He is a 7 lb. mutt, so ugly he is adorable if that makes sense. This is my time to recapture, adjust, and repair my perspective of God and my life. The other day I heard something behind me and caught a glimpse of a deer running across the driveway. I will say that those many walks bring me to a fresh place with my Father. I usually raise my hands up and begin to worship whether in song, prayer, a new song or just silent meditation. John Piper called it “having a God entranced Vision”. Piper gives credit to Jonathan Edwards who felt that “God is the beginning, the middle, and end of all things. Nothing exists without his creating it. Nothing stays in being without His sustaining word. Everything has its reason for existing from Him. Therefore nothing can be understood apart from Him, and all understandings of all things that leave Him out are superficial understandings, since they leave out the most important reality in the universe.”
In those daily walks I pray that my vision would be seeing “out of the God lens” and not my lens of unbelief, anger, self or anything that doesn’t bring Him glory. Am I passionate? Do I hunger and thirst after Him? When I become silent I realize that He is all sufficient, perfectly glorious and infinitely beautiful. He bids me “come and dine” to “sit under the apple tree” and to “enter into His rest”. And yes, worshipping the creation is not what He is desiring. My duty and privilege is all for the glory of God, to be satisfied in Him alone. Job had everything taken away from Him and yet he kept his eyes upon God Himself. What is getting you off balance today? It’s Monday and you might find yourself overwhelmed with the idea of going to work, college, car pool and the huge load that we have managed yet again to put on ourselves. Let’s close with Edwards finest! “THE ENJOYMENT OF GOD IS THE ONLY HAPPINESS WITH WHICH OUR SOULS CAN BE SATISFIED. TO GO TO HEAVEN, FULLY TO TO ENJOY GOD, IS INFINITELY BETTER THAN THE MOST PLEASANT ACCOMMODATIONS HERE. FATHERS, MOTHERS, HUSBANDS, WIVES, OR CHILDREN, OR THE COMPANY OF EARTHLY FRIENDS, ARE BUT SHADOWS; BUT GOD IS THE SUBSTANCE.”