Beauty.

What is blessing?  
The beauty of a sunset or a tree.  
The sound of a lovely tune, chords striking heart strings making us ache and rejoice at the same time.  
The savory, sour and sweet.  The satisfaction of a cheeseburger and milkshake.  The complexity of a fine wine. 
The vast expanse of stars pin pricked against the velvet of the night.  
The Order: the poetic nature of math and the order that exists in the very large swirling fiery galaxies down to the impossibly small un-observable particles that are dwarfed by atoms.  

These things are a blessing.  But they are a blessing that flows quite simply out of the nature of God.  It is simply who he is.  

The greater blessing for us is the ability to perceive these things.  Beauty would exist whether we knew it or not.  What does the worm know of these things?  In his great love, God has granted us the means by which to discover him, his nature, his goodness, his complexity.

My eyes behold impossible colors of the sunset.
My skin sighs with relief in the shade of a tree.
My ears marvel at the progression of a C chord to an A minor chord to a G chord and back to C, plucked by my own fingers.
To taste, oh to taste!
To drink in the sky!
To see symmetry, to see equations resolve, to look at the sun in all its rage and know that it is bound by the mind of God and the order he set forth at the beginning of time and all creation.

Lord, give us eyes to see and ears to hear.  
Jesus create in us a heart that can receive your greatest blessing: Your Love.

Matthew 13

“Though seeing, they do not see;

though hearing, they do not hear or understand.

14In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:

“ ‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding;

you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.

15For this people’s heart has become calloused;

they hardly hear with their ears,

and they have closed their eyes.

Otherwise they might see with their eyes,

hear with their ears,

understand with their hearts

and turn, and I would heal them.’^a

16But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. 17For truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.

Psalm 51

Create in me a pure heart, O God,

and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

11Do not cast me from your presence

or take your Holy Spirit from me.

12Restore to me the joy of your salvation

and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.

Water.

Once a year or so, you see a story on The Dead Sea, usually on CBS Sunday Morning or something of the like.  Tourists go there for the novelty.  Some go for what they believe to be the healing waters, which strikes me as odd since it's call The Dead Sea.  Here are a couple things I know.  It's a wasteland.  Nothing can live there.  It's freakishly salty water (8 times saltier than the ocean) gives it a density that allows bathers extreme buoyancy.  They just float right there on the surface.  The Dead Sea is also the lowest elevation point on earth, nearly 1300 feet below sea level.  Water is amazing, a life-giver.  But here, the water just isn't able to be what it's supposed to be.  People go to The Dead Sea.  They go to find something or receive something.  But they cannot be submerged.  The water has lost it's life.  And what of the salt.  We, the Children of God are called the salt of the earth.  Salt is meant to preserve and also to give flavor.  But if it is surrounded by death it loses it's purpose.  

Matthew 5
13 “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

Water is such a beautiful metaphor for the Grace of God.  It is refreshing, cleansing, and life giving.  Water gives meaning, and is appropriately used as the symbol and vessel for re-birth in Baptism.

Last week, my wife, my 3 daughters and I went to the pool for the first time this summer.  It was an overcast day.  Rain felt possible at any moment.  It was warm though and not actually raining.  My wife in her wisdom urged us on and we went to the pool and took our chances.  It is a great pool with multiple playing areas: slides, lazy river, diving boards and a big lap pool.  The kids got in right away, despite the chill.  They shrieked at the cool water, but immediately were having fun.  My wife began the slow descent down a long pool entry ramp.  The ramp is for coming and going, but my wife is a painfully slow pool enterer.  Foot.  Ankle.  Mid-ankle.  Below knee-cap.  Near knee-cap.  Retreat to mid-ankle.  As for me, I decided that it was too overcast and I wasn't feeling like it.  The kids played and eventually my wife got in.  I just milled about.  Sitting on the deck loungers, but never getting comfortable.  I smiled, but was turned inward.  I started to think of all the things I'd rather be doing.  But then I would realize I was sulking and very dutifully I got up and edged near the pool to be some sort of presence as a father figure.  My wife was up to mid thigh and playing with our youngest, still on the ramp.  I thought about getting in a couple times, but couldn't get out of my own head.  Then a drizzle came, but not for long.  

The girls got out of the water and headed to the picnic tables for some lunch.  After lunch, our youngest was ready to get back in the water.  I was ready to go home.  I quietly tried to urge my family in the direction of the door.  The older girls and my wife didn't seem to want to get back in the water anyway.  But the youngest was tugging at me and anyone to get into the water.  I wandered over with her.  I tried to convince her to play on the shallow ramp area by herself.  But then, something changed. I just gave in, for lack of a better term.  I took off my shirt and jumped in.  Joy, Water, Splashing, Shouting.  I gathered my little girl in my arms, put her on my back and took off swimming.  She squirmed, giggled and shrieked with a combination of fear and delight.  I threw her.  She started swimming from the edge to me and back again and she didn't even realize she was learning to swim.  I was so caught up in delight and play that I didn't even consider my self.  I was all the way out of my head and all the way in love.  Our middle daughter joined in.  Giggle, shriek, delight.  Soon I looked up to see my wife and our oldest giggling pointing and laughing too.  My wife was so happy to see me so happy.  I was immersed.  I was absorbed by the water.  I was adorned by wriggling children.  I was submerged under the flood of God's goodness.

Why, why, why does it take me so long to jump in?  The story above is the story of my reaction to God's Grace.  He is offering me forgiveness and freedom if I will just believe that he is who he says he is.  All I have to do is get in.  His Grace is a vast body of inviting water, yet I sulk on the hard concrete edges unwilling to surrender myself to something that might be shocking or uncomfortable.  I am unable to give up my own control and my own assertions.  But God uses others to guide us to the water.  He leads us beside still waters, but it is still our choice to get in.  It is a display of my impulsive nature that I jump in.  My wife's slow entry is indicative of her nature, but we are each resistant to grace in our own way. 

“All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful.”  Flannery O'Connor

Jumping in is the only way I have ever entered the water.  And almost every time I've entered the water it is after waiting too long.  I waste time.  I forgo the joy of being in his Grace until I can't take it anymore.  And such is the nature of his Grace that even though I should regret the wasted time, I am just so happy.  I am so happy to be in.  I wasted so much time in my life and yet I am just so happy to belong to Christ that I don't suffer the grief.  And while I wasted much of that day sulking on the deck, all I can think of is my wife's smiling face as she gazed on at those moments of pool time joy.

John 4
13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”