Woven Together
Good Morning Friends,
Last week I had dinner with my mother and two other woman at her assisted living facility. The combined age of our table was 350 years. One of the woman had just celebrated her 100th birthday. It is amazing to realize that this woman had breathed in and out 854 million times over the course of her life and was still breathing. It was amazing to contemplate that this woman’s heart had beaten 4 billion 745 million times and was still beating.
It was mind-blowing to think that her brain had processed and stored perhaps as much as 140 trillion bits of information. In her prime she could feel the pressure of the weight of a bee’s wing on her cheek. She could hear 1500 variations of tone and see 300,000 variations of color and smell a drop of perfume three rooms away. To think of all the things she had tasted intrigues me. It intrigues me to think how God has formed this woman so she might experience something greater than herself while eating dinner with others. It intrigues me that God not only knows all the things past, present and future in her life but also in each of ours as well. A couple of weeks ago we explored our senses in scripture. It is just another example of how through God’s presence we are Woven Together.
Scripture: O LORD, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away. You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, O LORD, you know it completely. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it. Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast. If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night,” even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.
Psalm 139:1-12 (NRSV)
Message: Do you really know how to see, feel, taste, smell and hear in a group? At one level we sense what we sense but to make sense of it all collectively I think we have to realize that we are on a journey to live in response to God’s omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent love. The challenge is to respond with every bit of our heart, mind, soul and strength. The difficulty is that we are fragmented….we get worn out…we find it difficult to sense with the right perspective for the community in which we live. And yet there is a collective wisdom we can draw on if we organize all the senses we get from our bodies and the environment around us into productive activities with others. Perhaps these women who have learned that wrinkles do not hurt are also examples for us of how the journey weaves us together into something wonderful…how all those trillions of bits of information can be integrated with an experience of God.
Pray we are impressed with God’s gift of life. Pray we realize that God’s Gift is enough. Pray we realize that without God life has no value. Pray that scripture and worship helps us to integrate the experience with the right perspective. Pray we sense the presence of God through our actions. Pray we discover that it is in God we breathe and move and have our very being. Pray we live in and respond to the love God has shared with us through our senses. Pray we become one in the Sprit.
Blessings,
John Lawson
Daily Devotionals 