I Took An Evening Walk

I had been walking through the evening air, enjoying the sunlight as it spread out on the town at my favorite angle. There's a magical time slot during which the sun makes everything look meaningful, whether it be a blossom on a tree or a couple walking along the sidewalk. It makes me contemplative, and full of desire to know more of the mystery behind everything, to know the God that created it all.

It fills my heart to know that at any moment I can connect with this God, and thank Him for the beauty that surrounds me, whether or not I choose to see it.

Choosing to see is half the battle, choosing to recognize that there's beauty in this world.

The other half of this blood-covered war is choosing to acknowledge that both beauty and brokenness exist in this world and yet God is still good. So many people see the beauty and turn cynical when they see the pain. "If God is good, then how can He allow this to happen?" They turn away and harden their hearts.

My belief is that the pain doesn't proclaim an absence of God, but our absence of Him. It shouldn't turn us away from Him, but towards Him. Our hearts, stubborn as they can be, often need that gut-wrenching and heart-breaking reality check before we humble ourselves to His power. However, don't think that He makes bad things happen just so that we'll worship Him, because that would be just like a father hitting his child so that they would do what he wants. God doesn't love like that.

The pain, brokenness, and cruelty are the result of our sin. The misuse of our free will in the garden of Eden to choose what we wanted over what God wanted. To this day, we face the consequences of that sin. And yet He didn't leave us to our own salvation, to make our own pitiful clothing out of leaves--no, He came and made the way for our salvation and gave us clothes that we could never make ourselves. In our pathetic state, He came to us and loved us still.

The pain will eventually end, and beauty will be eternal, but as it is now, there's a lot of death and hurt. So how do we react? Do we block it out and pretend it's not there? Do we say that God must not care?

         

No, instead we take up our armor and we step forward in faith and claim that God has a plan, a good plan for all of this. We choose to see and we choose to acknowledge that in the midst of this messed up world, He IS still good and always will be. We are His people and it is our delight to tell other's this hope: that God is good and is coming back to save those that turn to Him for deliverance. He doesn't promise to make your circumstances better, but He offers you salvation from your sins, and the faith to see beyond this veil and temporary existence.

Today, modern American Christians can be so blind to pain. But God is sending wake-up calls, I can feel it.

The evening air was cooling, yet my fast pace kept me warm as I sped past tree blossoms, closing tulips, and houses that smelled like laundry detergent. At one point during my walk the sun filtered through newborn birch tree leaves, and the effect was breathtaking. So simple. So pure.

And meanwhile I'm aware that thousands are dying from malaria, cancer, heartache, and their own sin. Babies are malnourished and waste away while the mother does what she can to save her child. Husbands beat their wives, and women tear at their sisters. Car crashes happen, and young lives are taken. Does that diminish the beauty?

No, it augments it.

Because, unlike others who see the pain as a sign that there can't be a God, I see the beauty in the pain as proof that there is a God, and that He does care. Perhaps it doesn't make sense, but when you think about it, a Gospel that preaches a God become His own creation through a virgin birth so as to die for the sins that He never committed and be raised again to conquer death doesn't exactly make sense. Yet He did it because He loves us. And though it doesn't always seem like it, He is still here with us. To me, beauty is God saying, "Yes, I am with You."

The wind rushed off of the sidewalk and a gush of warm air greeted me as I walked the incline. There's a little wilderness of sorts near our home, and within it I saw a bunch of smiling daffodils, bobbing their heads up and down in the wind. I waited till all the cars had passed and then dodged into the woods, picking them with long stems just as my Mother taught me to when I was a child. I ran across the road and down into our driveway, scurrying off like I had committed a crime, laughing as I ran with full abandon. Out of breath and cheeks full of color, I popped the flowers into a jar of water.

There.

There is beauty, and there is God.