I was talking to a new friend at an all-nighter event that the high school ministry held, and we were all at the beach watching the sunrise. He said something that struck me, that I thought was such a good point, and something wise amongst all of the randomness bouncing around in my head in this 12-hour period...
As the sun cleared the low clouds at the bottom of the horizon, scattering its light across the waves as the lake rolled back and forth, one of my sisters in Christ makes a remark along these lines: "How can anyone not believe there's a God, after seeing something so amazing like this?"
To which my new friend replies, "They have their eyes closed."
Reader, whoever you may be, how many times have you walked around with your eyes closed? Not just literally speaking; I mean, how many times have you been moving through life too fast to take in the world around you? How many times, even, have you simply just chosen not to open your eyes to the life all around you? I will freely admit that yes, I am guilty of doing this every now and then. I like to say that I love stopping and admiring the beauty of nature everywhere I go, and my friends will even attest to this by saying things like they always have to wait up for me when we're hiking through the woods or something of the sort. But there are definitely times when I'm just "too busy" to marvel in all of God's creation (i.e. having a poor frame of mind when I'm running errands, spending hours upon hours doing nothing on Facebook, making excuses for not setting aside that precious time to be completely alone and quiet with God in nature).
Opening my eyes to that gorgeous sunrise and meditating on how God brings new mercies each day really opened myself to God's presence this morning. The intimacy of sharing with God in those 20-ish minutes of that golden ball of fire rising above the vast waters of Lake Michigan was really something remarkable that I had never done before. How long have I been walking with my eyes shut to such a marvel? Eighteen years of my life?
Perhaps if the world slowed down a bit more and took more time to stop and really take in everything around us, our eyes would all be opened...opened to uncontainable joy, to true beauty, to pure love, to satisfying peace, to the King of Kings.
