God pours light into all things—everything is holy. Everything
teaches us more about the God who created us. Why would be put ourselves
and our selfish desires—willfulness that does not fulfill God’s call to
us as co-creators—ahead of that which brings us closer to the Creator?
The diverse ways God is present to us calls us to do more. As Richard
Rohr, in “Christ Since the Beginning,” points out through Ilia Delio’s
words, “We are created to read the book of creation so that we may know
the Author of Life.”
Delio echoes Aquinas as well,
something Rohr also points out and connects: “God brought things into
being in order that God’s goodness might be communicated to creatures,
and be represented by them; and because that goodness could not be
adequately represented by one creature alone, God produced many and
diverse creatures, that what was wanting to one in the representation of
the divine goodness might be supplied by another. For goodness, which
in God is simple and uniform, in creatures is manifold and divided.”
I
have spent many Saturdays now walking out somewhere under the sky: on a
trail, in a garden, in neighborhoods, on campus greens. When I present
pictures of these in social media I do it with the intent to reach my
family, strewn across the world, and friends everywhere, too. To show
you a beauty that might lift you as it lifted me. Not to “show off,” or
create the much-touted “my-life-is-better-that-yours” attitude social
media can and does often portray. Oh no—I am most certainly opening
myself up to you and aiming or vision through a God’s eye level, a
reminder of the ways in natural beauty— even ordinary beauty, unexpected
beauty, in the fresh and green and in the old and worn—we find God.
I
pray for you today that you find this moment, and many to come, day by
day: anchors to steady you. A way home. An assurance that the rocky
journey will lead you secure to where you belong.