Blog # 324 Seeing Double

Blog # 324   Seeing Double

                   In reading a Scripture passage in my breviary recently I was especially impressed with the author's  elation and response to God in creation. Here is what I read from Sirach. ( 42: 15 - 43 12).  " As the rising of the sun is clear to all, so the glory of the Lord fills all His works.  How beautiful are His works!  ...all of them differ, one from another, yet none of them has He made in vain...the sun....the moon... the stars that adorn with their sparkling the heights of God at whose command they keep their place and never relax their vigils.  Behold the rainbow!  Then bless its maker, for majestic indeed is its splendor; it spans the heavens with its glory, this bow bent by the hand of God."
                       Sun, moon, stars, rainbow; all are ordinary things so frequently taken for granted, overlooked and missed as an expression of God's presence power goodness and love.  At any one time or another we may not have an opportunity of actually seeing with our eyes the stars, the moon, or a rainbow.  But if we stop to think about it we know they are 'there', real, in some actual place in the universe.  Wherever we are we have to take time, put other agendas aside for a while, and relax, to let the Lord in.  A poet might tell us the stars are 'watching' us, though we may not be watching them. 
                     For someone who experiences faith in God as the Creator of all that exists the stars the sun and the moon are not just natural realities that we see, but gifts that we receive  from our Creator.  There is a dimension here that we cannot buy or earn.  Once we believe in God as the Creator of all, everything that exits is a gift.

                      An atheist sees the sun and is warmed by it.  So are we.  An atheist is nourished by the same food and process of digestion as we.  Only those who believe are consciously and personally gifted by the  Father's love.  As a  person who is asleep might as well be blind during the time he or she is asleep, so the person who is not actually aware and conscious of the presence of God in creation might as well be an atheist until he or she 'wakes up'. In this we can distinguish a professed atheist  from a practical atheist.  Neither of them is blessed by the joy and peace we know in living by faith in the ever-present love of our Father. 

                   All creation is a gift, an expression of the Father's love. Let's not pass it by as though all the beauty it offers is what we see with our eyes rather than in addition to what we see, what we know through faith.  Thank You, Lord, for what ever was, whatever is, and what ever will be !