ODJ: Speaking Everywhere

October 28, 2018 

READ: Psalm 19:1-6 

The heavens proclaim the glory of God (v.1).

One evening, after everyone else in the neighbourhood had packed off to bed, I walked into our garden under a hazy, moonlit sky. None of the deer, rabbits or squirrels that regularly parade across our lawn were there. There was only a brilliant full moon and dark silence. Due to my own internal noise and a hectic day, I hadn’t been aware of God’s presence. But there I was, suddenly immersed in gratitude and awe. I looked up at that magnificent sky and offered God two words: “Thank you.”

The psalms assure us that if we pay attention, creation reveals the Creator to us. “The heavens proclaim the glory of God,” the psalmist writes. “Day after day they continue to speak” (Psalm 19:1-2). This is an unusual language, to be sure, as the expansive horizon speaks “without a sound or word; their voice is never heard” (v.3). And “yet their message has gone throughout the earth, and their words to all the world” (v.4). So without speaking an audible word, the earth itself is a megaphone in every corner of the globe. Creation shouts God’s name!

God isn’t playing hide-and-seek with us or making Himself available to us only after we prove our spiritual discipline or moral diligence. We don’t need to be an intellectual genius or possess unique spiritual insight to encounter God. We only need open eyes and ears, a curious and watchful heart.

God is speaking to us everywhere: revealing His love and kindness and power in the pounding surf and atop snow-tipped mountains, as we breathe in the smell of pinecones in the autumn, and as we watch a bluebird snatching seed from the feeder attached to our Japanese maple in the spring. Our God actively reveals Himself everywhere. We’d have to work hard to miss it.

—Winn Collier

365-day plan: Acts 13:1-12