Sniffing out Truth

Dogs! Take them on a walk and they only want to sniff the bushes that gazillion other dogs have “marked.” Pictured at right is “Molly,” a neighbor’s dog whom I take care of when they’re away, and incurable shrub-sniffer.

It’s hard to think deep thoughts when you’re trying to keep up with a dog that wants to check every bush on the block in record time, but I tried. While Molly kept her nose in greens, I kept mine on the sky (with the exception of times I needed to whip out the plastic bag for her “deposits”). And it struck me: a lot of people spend their lives sniffing out the bad stuff instead of embracing the beauty around them.Poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning put it so well: “Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees, takes off his shoes. The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.”

The “bush” reference is to Moses’ encounter with God in Exodus 3. Like Moses plodding through shepherd duties, I tend to grind out the days by getting through my to-do lists. (Nothing against to-do lists—they both remind and motivate to do what’s needed.) But two books given me this past week by spiritually-sensitive friends have reminded me to look for those common bushes, afire with God.

One was by Ann Voskamp, who as a farm wife and mother of six home-schooled children knows the distracting tyranny of having too much to do. But in One Thousand Gifts (Zondervan), she traces her journey of finding splendor—no, God-joy, in the ordinary. She calls this eucharisteo, the practicing of giving thanks in all things. Her book is the chronicle of that: thanks for the rainbow hues in soap bubbles, of the glory of a harvest moon, even “ugly-beautiful” like mismatched socks.

Author Ruth Meyers encourages focused praise through 31 Days of Praise: Enjoying God Anew (Multnomah). Her month of scripture-based praise-prayers targeted some course-corrections needed in my own prayer life. Touching where we all live, she invites us to thank God for our weaknesses (and His power to remove or change these), for His power at work in untangling the “snarls in my soul,” and for what He’s doing through the people in our lives who cause more pain than joy. Meyers said that as she follows the psalmists’ example of praising God, “sooner or later (often sooner) the Lord releases me from being a slave to my distressing emotions” (p. 29).

She also included a heart-stirring, one-line prayer from the writings of missionary Amy Carmichael (whose Dohnavur Fellowship in India rescued hundreds from temple prostitution): “O Lord Jesus, my Beloved, may I be a joy to thee.” You can’t pray that and say, “I don’t have any purpose in life.” Our purpose is to bring joy to the One who created us. Praise is one avenue, and living day-by-day for His glory through vocation and relationships is another.

So back to Molly the dog. Yes, life stinks at times (like those “marked” bushes along the street). But God invites us to look up, to His glory, and declare it through the praise of our lips and the praise of our lives. And, in so doing, to realize that we stand on holy ground.