We memorised Psalm 19 many years ago and we when were reviewing our memory work during the week my little girl asked, "Can we do the one about the bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion?" We all laughed because she is very excited about being a flower girl at her big sister's wedding next week and then at her big brother's wedding early next year but there's something very beautiful and splendid about those words and also the rest of the Psalm.
It was the Glory of God that I saw in nature one day in my late teens that revealed Him to me for the first time. I didn't understand it as such at the time but the natural beauty that reached into my heart that day prepared me for the day about five months later when I committed my life to the One who created the beauty I beheld.
Many years later, a couple of months ago in fact, my husband and I were driving to Adelaide airport returning home after my dad's funeral with all the emotion and weariness that occasioned, when after a light shower a rainbow broke through the clouds and I just sensed God's presence in a very tangible way. I read these words later:
If we are children of God, we have a tremendous treasure in Nature.
In every wind that blows, in every night and day of the year,
in every sign of the sky,
in every blossoming and in every withering of the earth,
there is a real coming of God to us if we simply use our starved imagination to realise it.
And Nature, the old nurse, took
The child upon her knee,
Saying: "Here is a story-book
Thy Father has written for thee."
"Come, wander with me," she said,
"Into regions yet untrod;
And read what is still unread
In the manuscripts of God."
And he wandered away and away
With Nature, the dear old nurse,
Who sang to him night and day
The rhymes of the universe.
Longfellow
Psalm 19 is a reminder not to take the 'manuscripts of God' for granted. I lived for three years in another state and went back for a visit a couple of decades later. I was really surprised to find that the spot was a beautiful place. I hadn't seen the loveliness when I lived there as I was focusing on my problems and they veiled the beauty that proclaimed His presence.
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