Back in the day...

Image of God?

I have found that I really don't do good brain work in my office, and home is too distracting, so I tend to do my best sermon study and writing in coffee shops and other public places. In an effort to cut down on expenses, I have taken to studying at my local library - it's free, as long as I bring my own coffee and nibbles with me.

But at this local library, from time to time the most amazingly annoying junior-high boy comes to work with his tutor. He clearly struggles academically, but that's now what bothers me (that part actually attracts me).

What I find simultaneously fascinating and repellent about this young man is his white-boy, wanna-be-a-gangster, high-whine, arrogance-based-on-adolescent-insecurity attitude. His tutor has the patience of Job (which I have personally told her), though just as clearly she is not without her own issues.

But when he walked in just a few minutes ago, what convicted me was that he, too, is created in the image of God. He, too, has an innate capacity for beauty and glory. He too was created to be blessed and to bless. He too was intended by God not to attempt to swagger through life, but to create and build up and renew the creation around him.

I'm not sure what to do with all this. Certainly I'm on the lookout for further opportunities to encourage (contra the dark looks from others). But perhaps it's as much a matter of being aware of where my own heart is, and staying in touch with God's heart for those he places me near.

I lift my eyes to the hills...or, sometimes, not.

I always enjoy spending time with my mother-in-law. But one advantage of visiting her (as opposed to when she comes to visit us) is the amazing scenery around Anchorage. That said, this visit has been a little different than others, and not just because we brought our 5month old son with us.
After a few days here, I realized that I'm just not as aware of the mountains as I used to be. Not that they aren't impossible to miss (more than 10,000 feet high and right behind the city, plus right across the Cook Inlet the Kenai range, the Sleeping Lady and the Alaska Range, and even Denali on a clear day. And not that they aren't simply beautiful, and not that I don't deeply enjoy looking at them.

But I think it's just after living in completely flat terrain (NJ, MI) for almost 7 years now, I just don't expect them to be there. As I'm driving around, all I expect to see is the road stretched out in front of me, and since I don't expect to be able to drink in the beauty of the Chugach (or, in other places I've lived, the Cascades, or the Sierra Nevadas), I simply don't lift my eyes up that extra degree or two and see them.
Which makes me wonder how often I get like that in my spiritual life. I've been privileged to be in places where God has worked powerfully and tangibly to transform lives. Of late, his work has seemed, well, somehow smaller, and I've chalked it up to only being in congregations for a couple of years or only a few months at a time as I've done interim work.
But I wonder, when my spiritual terrain has seemed a little more flat, if sometimes the reason is less that God isn't doing grand things, and more that I just am not lifting my eyes up those extra couple of degrees to see what should be blindingly obvious -- and wondrously beautiful.

"Lord, let me see!"