to dazzle us

I'm not a city-soul. I'm just not. My sanctuary is on my horse's back under the night sky, or toes in the sand, or rain on my face, or flower in my hand, or trees overhead, or ocean underneath. On Saturday we got out of the city. My soul breathed. We enjoyed fellowship and the best of God's creation.

 Here is a taste for you and some more thoughts from Donald Miller in Through Painted Deserts. I hope it refreshes your soul too.

“And maybe when a person doesn’t buy the lies anymore, when a human stops long  enough to realize the stuff people say to get us to part with our money often isn’t true, we can finally see the sunrise, smell the wetness in a Gulf Breeze, stand in awe at a downpour no less magnificent that a twenty-thousand-foot waterfall, ten square miles wide, wonder at the physics of a duck paddling itself across the surface of a pond, enjoy the reflection of the sun on the face of the moon, and know, This is what I was made to do. This is who I was made to be, that life is being given to me as a gift, that light is a metaphor, and God is doing these things to dazzle us.” 

“I wonder at what Paul said back in Portland, how God is good, how it doesn’t do any good to run from Him because what He has is good and who He is, is good. Even if I want to run, it isn’t really what I want—what I want is Him, even if I don’t believe it. If He made all this existence, you would think He would know what He is doing, and you would think He could be trusted. Everything I want is just Him, to get lost in Him, to feel His love and more and more of this dazzling that He does. I wonder at His beautiful system and how it feels better than anything I could choose or invent for myself.”

“Life is not a story about me, but it is being told to me, and I can be glad of that. I think that is the why of life and, in fact, the why of this ancient faith I am caught up in: to enjoy God. The stars were created to dazzle us, like a love letter; light itself is a metaphor, something that exists outside of time, made up of what seems like nothing, infinite in its power, something that can be experienced but not understood, like God. Relationships between men and women indicate something of the nature of God—that He is relational, that He feels love and loss. It’s all metaphor, and the story is about us; it’s about all of us who God made, and God himself, just enjoying each other.”