The Question 006 | Dust

Creation

006 | Dust

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

Genesis 1.27 ESV

“…then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.”

Genesis 2.7 ESV

Right now, you are alive. Your blood is pumping, your brain is firing with electricity, and your lungs are constantly inflating and deflating. You’re digesting your last meal you ate and your skin is being replaced by new skin.

Think of the way our lives work. Think about how amazing life is. Somehow, a living man and a living woman can come together and create a living child. Life can produce more life, which can in turn produce more life.

Yet, somehow there is more to us, more to life, than just our bodies. There is a Something, a Spark inside us. Somehow we can create a combination of sounds that moves us to tears, songs with pitch and rhythm and they do beautiful things. We create. We build. We have art and culture and incredibly complex language to express what is inside of us. We can calculate and measure that which is unseen, we can look down to the tiniest building blocks of matter and out into the vastness of space. 

We have souls. We are set apart from the rest of creation, from the earth and the air and the sea and the creatures. We are different, made in the Image of the Creator. We are like Him, we reflect Him.

And that is absolutely amazing.

Prayer

Dear Lord,

Thank you for creating us. Thank you for making us like You. Help us to become increasingly more and more like You with each passing hour. Renew our hearts, refresh our souls. Repair in us what has been broken, and shape our own desires to be like Yours.

Amen. 

The Question

What about your soul reflects the Creator?

The Question 005 | Salmon

Creation

005 | Salmon

“And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.” So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth. And there was evening and morning, the fifth day.”

Genesis 1.20-23

Have you ever watched a flock of birds take flight from a field? They burst forth from among the grass with furious energy and spin up into the sky. There is such life in birds, such marvelous and wonderful vitality.

Look up a video about salmon migration. Every year, salmon are born in the ocean. These salmon swim around the ocean for a few years but eventually go upstream. They swim into rivers, jumping up waterfalls and heading towards lakes they’ve never seen before. They fight the current the entire way, dodging hungry bears that try to catch them as they return to the water they were spawned in. It’s an incredible journey, one salmon only make once in a lifetime.

The Prayer

Dear Lord,

Give me the strength to swim with You. Thank You for the guidance and direction of Your Spirit within me. Help me to pursue Your heart and Your will before my own. 

"O my Strength, I will sing praises to you, for you, O God, are my fortress, the God who shows me steadfast love." (Psalm 59.17)

Amen. 

The Question

What "rivers" in your life do you need to swim upstream in order to go home?

The Question 004 | Seasons

Creation

004 | Seasons

“And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and for years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so.”

Genesis 1.14-15 ESV

Time is not real. There is no universal clock that the cosmos runs on. More specifically, the way we think of time is nothing but a construct. It's a system we came up with to keep track of what's happened and to plan what will happen in the future. 

For thousands of years, people have used the stars and the sun and the moon to keep track of time. A "day" is one revolution of the earth. A "month" is one cycle of the moon waxing and waning. A "year" is one cycle of the four seasons, a season for planting, a season for watering, a season for harvesting, and a season for resting. We keep track of time using the sun, moon, and seasons. These celestial bodies help us keep track of time.

About a month and a half ago we celebrated the New Year. We reflected on the past and looked to the future. We made decisions about what lies ahead and found some closure on the past. Look back on the last year. The last four seasons. The sun has lit up the sky and the moon has waxed and waned and the rain’s come and gone. The harvest came in from golden fields. The winter drove us all inside, forcing us to rest and to keep still. There was a passing. Things began and ended and kept going. You changed as an individual. You took about 6 million breaths. Your heart beat about 35 million times. New blood flows in your veins, new skin protects your body, new hair covers your head. You are an almost entirely new person now than you were last year. 

And yet you begin a new cycle, the cycle you lived through last year, and the year before that, and the year before that. 

 Prayer

Father, 

Thank you for sustaining my life. Thank you for making me new. Thank you for second, third, fourth, and countless restarts and chances to get it right. Help me to rely on You and Your strength rather than my own. 
In Jesus' name, 
Amen. 

The Question

What will you do with your new self in this new year?

The Question 003 | Earth

Creation

003 | Earth

“And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning, the third day.”

Genesis 1.11-13 ESV

Earth. We live on a little blue and green ball wrapped up in air and spinning at an alarming rate though vast and lonely space. We're on a giant ball of shifting rock plates on top of molten lava. Rain falls and gets turned to steam by the sun, rising high into the sky so it can fall again. It gets soaked up by roots and by leaves and gives life wherever it goes.

Think of plants. Think of all the things you eat every day that were once planted in the earth. The grains. The vegetables. The fruits. Wheat, apples, pears, sugar, cucumbers, tomatoes, corn, beans, lettuce, kiwi, pineapple. The list goes on and on and on. We live off the earth. What comes up from the ground gives us life, makes us grow, makes us heal.  We bury the plants we don’t eat back into the dirt and a few weeks later a new plant appears and soon enough we have food that gives us life.

It’s a cycle. It’s a system designed by an intelligent and loving God. We eat because that’s the way the world works. It’s the way God made things work. This system of planting and growing and harvesting and eating is a beautiful, deeply spiritual experience. We were made to grow things, to garden, to prune, to weed, to help growing things to grow. It goes down to the very nature of who we are, made in the image of God, the Great Sustainer.

The Question

In what ways has God already provided what you need?

"Never Alone"

Loneliness is such a discouraging feeling. Whether you feel like an outsider or are literally alone, it can still hurt. I think this emotion strikes the core of who we are. Humans were created to live in communities; no one is meant to go through life alone. Deep within all of us we have a desire to have a place to call our own where we are loved for who we are.

When I was younger, I fell in love with The Door Within trilogy. It had a medieval setting and a story full of knights and conquests, kings and castles, good and evil. I can trace the majority of my dreams that include swords or dragons back to these books. I have read and re-read each book in the series many times. The reason why I liked these books so much was because they contained many parallels to the Great Story, the story of how our God engages his people. The Door Within Series were not only a source of entertainment for me, but also encouragement. Knights in the story would fight in the name of their king, who was good and loving and somehow able to help them even if he wasn't with them. The people of the kingdom loved their king and trusted him even when they didn't understand him. 

Although I learned many lessons about life and our true King through this series, there was a phrase that always stood out to me. The characters would say it often when they were discouraged or scared or in danger. It was a simple phrase: "Never alone." These words were whispered by characters facing evil, seemingly alone. These words were  shouted by companies of knights facing impossible odds. It gave them supernatural courage and strengthened their trust in the goodness of their king. This phrase has stayed with me for many years. 

"Never alone."

Our God makes us the same promise to his people through Jesus in Matthew 28:20. 

"…And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age." (NLT)  These words of Jesus were the very last thing Matthew recorded in his book. Jesus was leaving them in flesh so that the Holy Spirit could come and live within all followers of Christ. Deuteronomy 31:6 says "Be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid and do not panic before them. For the LORD your God will personally go ahead of you. He will neither fail you nor abandon you." (NLT)

God is with us! His Holy Spirit is in us, guiding us and helping us. There is no situation in our lives we face alone. We can't always trust our feelings. That is why we need faith. Take God at his word, and know that you are never alone.

The other way God demonstrates His presence with us is through our Christian communities. God calls us all as believers to be unified, to encourage each other, and to be a support group. Since churches are made up out of other humans who mess up, our church communities can occasionally leave us still feeling alone. 

The Apostle Paul addressed unity within the Church throughout his letters. "I appeal to you, dear brothers and sisters, by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, to live in harmony with each other. Let there be no divisions in the church. Rather, be of one mind united in thought and purpose." (1 Corinthians 1:10 NLT); "Love each other with genuine affection and take delight in honoring each other." (Romans 12:10 NLT); "May God, who gives patience and encouragement, help you live in complete harmony with each other, as is fitting for the followers of Christ Jesus. Then all of you can join together with one voice, giving praise and glory to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." (Romans 15:5-6 NLT). Verses like these go on and on. God intended His people to care for one another and to act as one.

Take comfort in the knowledge that our God loves us fiercely and will never leave us. He has shown us in so many ways that He is here. "Don't you realize that all of you together are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God lives in you?" (1 Corinthians 3:16 NLT)