Tag / Wonder

by Greg

Earth

The EarthI’ve been watching Star Trek a lot again (my Sabres are done, so… I have more viewing time.) 🙂 I love the stories… I love the idea of space travel. I even love the idea of alien worlds and cultures. Pretty neat.

I have a nifty screen saver that shows a real-time satelite view of the Earth. It’s amazing! I was just taking a look at it and just had to smile at how COOL the Earth is. I thought how amazing it would be to see it from that vantage point. Perhaps from the moon? Even further? But then how much cooler to return home to the big blue oceans, and the green land masses, and the white clouds circling the globe.

And I just wondered… what if we are the only ones? What if we someday figure out how to travel between star systems… and we discover that there is no other planet like ours, and there are no other forms of life outside of our own planet? (In this case, I mean like us… not microbes or whatever…) What would that say about our planet? About us? Doesn’t that make this place pretty amazingly special?

I think it does.

Like I said… I think it would be neat to find other planets like ours out there… even to find there are other living beings elsewhere in the universe. But so far… it’s just us, and we definitely have the coolest planet out there!

Although, I am somewhat partial to those big blue planets, Neptune and Uranus… they look pretty cool, too… 🙂

by Greg

Simply Fascinating

This morning as I was taking my shower, I turned to face the water to rinse off my soapy face and I felt a breeze. I thought, “That’s odd,” and opened my eyes. It was just the water shooting out, displacing the air, and making a little “breeze”. You don’t necessarily think that when the water shoots out that it has to “move” anything… cause air is so “transparent”. Hard to remember it’s there, and actually substantive. But, it’s true, and there was a little breeze.

So, I just stood there, taking it in for a moment. It was fascinating.

Then I felt a little silly, being fascinated by a shower head… 🙂 But really, it is cool. And so many times we miss the simple things that really are fascinating. God has packed the world full of simply amazing things. Just like the little breeze made by shooting water through the air, or we’ve been having fun tracking Venus across the sky lately, or … you name it. From the tiny to the immense, there are very simple, everyday things that can be so fantastically amazing if we let them.

I hope you have a moment or two today away from the rush and routine of daily life to just be fascinated by something as simple as a little breeze.

by Greg

Marveling

I was listening to a podcast from NASA the other day that described a recent photo session from a satellite in a synchronous orbit around the sun, 1 million miles behind the earth. They had captured the moon passing in front of the sun, except, since it was 1,000,000 miles away, the moon was a lot smaller, and did not cover the entire disc of the sun as it does from Earth.

As they were talking, I looked up at the sun, not far above the horizon in the early hours of the morning, and I thought that it is so cool that the sun being 93 million miles away and the moon being a lot closer (don’t remember that distance!) look about the same in our sky. That was a pretty cool plan by the Planner. 🙂

We were just talking not long ago also about how cool just the moon is. How it’s cycles are so regular (people used to plan around the lunar month) and how neat it is that moon always faces the same way? Doesn’t it? It doesn’t rotate. Does it? I’m not putting a lot of research into this… just taking a moment to marvel at the universe God has created. The precision of all of the elements within it working together, and this is the “fallen” state. Romans says creation “groans” to also be set free.

It’s a pretty amazing world. Just wanted to share some of my recent marveling.

by Greg

Loss

“I came naked from my mother’s womb,
and I will be stripped of everything when I die.
The LORD gave me everything I had,
and the LORD has taken it away.
Praise the name of the LORD!”

Those were the first words – words of worship – immediately following Job’s hearing the news that his children had been killed in a horrible accident. And just before that he had lost much of the wealth that God had blessed him with. An amazing reaction to an extraordinary circumstance. His first thought was to worship the God who had given him life, even in the midst of the demise of the life he had known.

There is a song by songwriter Matt Redman called Blessed Be Your Name. It echoes those lines Job spoke so many years ago,

“You give and take away, you give and take away,
my heart will choose to say, Lord blessed be your name!”

Those words reverberated loudly – even confidently – through my head as we learned that the child we had been eagerly preparing a space for in our family, had stopped developing inside mom’s womb.

“You give and take away… You give and take away…
My heart will choose to say… Lord, blessed be Your name.”

The first moments were just hard. Shocking. Deep sadness. Life hoped for, now lost. And this was not the first time we faced this.

About one week into our tour, there was such a shocking occurence that we thought we had lost the baby. That was on our anniversary. Not the way we wanted to end the day. The drive to the hospital was a little over an hour. Of silence. Of doubting. Of wondering. Of self-pummeling. I felt completely culpable for the loss of this baby’s life. Our lifestyle, my missed chances at reminding Jen to rest, my busyness keeping me from helping Jen with the three kids on the outside. All things were pointing to me being the reason we had lost the baby.

But God was beyond gracious.

When we arrived at the hospital, we were greeted by a friendly nurse who was fairly convinced that the baby was doing just fine. The doctor who followed happened to be at the church we had led in worship the morning prior, and he echoed those sentiments, but they needed to do an ultrasound to make sure.

My heart skipped a beat or two in astonished joy. My soul gasped for air! I can’t describe the feeling of life from death. How the Father must have felt when his son was given breath again! Even knowing the plan ahead of time, his heart must have exploded with joy knowing that not only his son, but all of us who trust in him were given back to him that day!

We went from that place, with images of a dancing baby in our head, and the hope that through a rough 6 or 7 months ahead we would emerge with a miracle baby from God.

“You give and take away…”

Yesterday, following the weekend of God giving wildly to us through his people, we experienced the pain of loss again.

Jen had been experiencing signs of trouble again (we thought) and so we went to the doctor, who put the monitor on Jen’s belly to listen for the heart beat. After about 10 awkward seconds, she said, “Sometimes it’s difficult to find the heartbeat with that machine.”

That had not been our experience, and so we were already thinking the worst.

She turned on the ultrasound equipment, and we began looking at the baby inside. It had grown since the first time, but it was lifeless. No movement. No heartbeat. No life.

No words were said for a time, until the doctor broke the silence, “I’m afraid I have some very bad news…”

My heart sank. It was quite final. The baby was gone. Again.

But this time, the words to that song kept replaying in my head. “You give and take away… my heart will choose to say, Lord, blessed be your name…”

And I meant it. Though I was not necessarily comforted by it just yet.

We discussed the next steps and headed out to the van to go home. The song continued in my head.

When we got to the van, we just sat there in silence. We were both attempting to understand what was happening. To process it. Why would God want to give us a baby for 12 weeks, and then take it home?

There were tears. There was silence. We prayed together. We talked. But the most amazing thing was happening inside my head and heart.

Instead of sadness, there was supreme confidence in God’s love for me. More than just confidence, there was palpable reality. Almost like his hands on my shoulders.

And the song would not leave.

I knew the scripture was from Job, so I looked it up on the computer we had brought with us.

The first thing that stuck out to me was in the NIV translation: “Job got up, tore his robe and shaved his head, then he fell to the ground in worship.” His first response was a brief moment of agony and mourning, and then he worshipped. Instead of blaming God for letting this happen, he was compelled to worship him.

That’s where I lost it.

I was too! That’s what I had been feeling the whole time in silence. Strong images and feelings of God’s love and provision for me, for us, were present in my head. I was not conciously thinking of them… they were just there. I was not dwelling on the loss, but rather on things gained from the Giver of all good things.

And that’s exactly what Job experienced.

God’s bigness, his caring, his inividual attention to my life, his unfathomable love — all of that had never been so near to me, so palpable, so REAL.

Words do not do the experience justice, but I really wanted to try. I was astounded by the love God has for, and was showing to ME. I was crying, not out of sadness at our loss as much as out of overwhelming joy and gladness at my Father who loves me.

In a moment, literally less than a second, God also gave me a strong series of images that reminded me of his goodness.

There were three sets of two images. First was the hopsital back in Arkansas. Image one was the deep sadness of losing the baby, and image two was the unspeakable joy of getting that life back! Second was from the weekend just past, where image one was the empty bank account and actually having zero cash being 3000 miles from home with many big bills to pay, and me asking God in a parking lot, “God, what are you going to do??” The second image connected to that was of the generosity of our Father through his people this weekend, we were given nearly $2,000 by people in places that wouldn’t normally be a source of such abundance. The third image was our present circumstance, the final loss of our baby, and attached to that image was a future provision from God that would blow us away with greatness as much as this loss had brought us low.

I had a very specific image, but as I am not claiming to be a prophet, I will guard that image in my heart and will let you know if that does indeed come to fruition. I don’t think God gave me those images for you… but I KNOW he gave them for me.

In less than a second, all of that imagery of God’s attention to our lives came into focus, and I was full-on reminded of his incredible provision and love.

And again, I was brought to tears… not of sadness, but pure, unthinkable joy!

Our God is so good. So, so good.

We are sad, and still dealing with loss. Loss costs us. We won’t know this member of our family until heaven. I see images of families with kids, or even our kids, and I miss the face of the baby we lost. We are definitely hurting.

But there is over all of that, a far greater peace and hope. God made me SO aware of his presence and love in my life today, right now. He is so good that way. And I am not alone in that experience. Which makes it even cooler. Friends today have shared having a similar experience, and I believe the reason Job reacted how he did was that God was as overwhelmingly present for him that day as he was for me. And Job’s loss exceeds mine by such a volume as I can’t imagine.

He is so good. Today, yesterday, forever.

The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. Praise the name of the Lord.