Blog # 351 CREATOR / FACTS / MEANING / POWER

BLOG  #  351  CREATOR / FACTS / MEANING / POWER

            Did you ever go into a friend's home and notice on the mantle or on an end table a stone or a shell?  You might have asked about them and found out they were very meaningful and precious to the persons who live in the house.  The stone is the one the husband sent home from Europe during World War II, when it was not at all certain he would safely return.  The shell is the one he and she found on a beach on the occasion they were walking along together and he asked her if she would marry him.
           The shell is not the most beautiful perhaps, nor is the stone of precious material, but both the stone and the shell are very meaningful, not in themselves but in the message  they still bring, in the relationship they express, and in the love they nourish and recall. For those who know their story the shell and the stone are special.  For someone who does not know their story they are not very special at all. 
              We have a situation parallel to this in the response and interpretation various people give to the reality of creation all around us.  For the plumber who came to the house to fix the kitchen sink, the stone and the shell were likely not even noticed. He was in their presence as he passed through the living room on his way to the kitchen, but chances are he did not even see them, or if he did, they flashed in and out of his sight as quickly as he passed them by.

                Some people live for years in the world as all of us know it and never see God's 'hand' or hear God's 'voice'.  They treat the world in a very practical sort of way, use it to make a living, enjoy its pleasures, avoid its dangers, and appreciate its great beauty, but never see hear or touch more than the eye the ear or the skin can tell them. 

               Other people live in the same world as the first group, with the same beauty and power, with the same possibilities for pleasure or for pain, with the same colors shapes amd sounds, the same sun moon and stars, but they see and hear more and differently. 
 
                  They know the story behind creation, its meaning and its purpose.  It is very special.  They know  God!