How to Get Out of An Auto-pilot Life

My windshield is smeared with salt and grime, striped with my windshield wipers’ attempts to polish the world.  The wiper fluid is frozen and its meager attempts at throwing up liquid just makes the snow on the front of the car splatter with blue.

It feels like that sometimes, this trying to see the world’s glory.  Beauty is veiled and I hunger to see as the Eucharistic prayer says, “God at work in the world about us.”

 

Last night, as I climbed onto the couch with my journal, I had the sense that God wanted to call me “to walk with Him in the cool of the evening.”

 

Have you ever done that, walked through a gardener’s small plot of land in the summer growing season? Full of the pride of creation they point out how the blueberry bushes have taken off this year and the hydrangeas are embarrassingly abundant.

 

You take time, listen, drink in beauty.

 

If we were Adam and Eve and invited by God to take that slow putter around His garden, I imagine He would point out the highlights: the leathery broad leaves of elephant’s ear shining with the evening sun, the orchid’s delicate spots, the scurry of the chipmunk. Perhaps He would even gaze into the kaleidoscopic color of your eyes and point out His delight where function and glory mix.  You, my friend, are a crowning achievement of creation.

 

Could it be that is how God desires us to walk around in His world?  As a beauty seeker always on the hunt.

We were on our way home from a flurry of errands when I prayed for open eyes.  It’s so easy to live, eyes down, barreling through the hours.

 

The sun was shining on the morning’s fresh snow and the shadows spread out long across the yards, dark filigree against white.  My eyes blinked open and then squinted into a world covered with snow and reflecting light.

Lord, clean the smear of a life on auto-pilot. I live anxious and self-focused, giving more worship to my to-do list than to my Life-giver. I weigh my value in ticked off lines instead of Your delight. I pray for epiphany eyes to take in beauty and search for Your hand at work in the world about me.

 

Join me in continuing to search for God in beauty and in the Word.  Slip your email into the Connect box on the front page and together…we’ll pilgrimage eyes wide open.

1. penne with Parmesan Béchamel sauce

2. Waking up to a songbird which found Caed’s new feeder

3. Caedmon with a new pair of binoculars naming birds

4. Madeline feeding the birds strings of seeds along tree branches and windowsills

5. A fire, Narnia, and a girl giggling beside me

6. Carrying a sleeping boy upstairs

7.   .75 primroses, a bit of pink frilliness for my desk

8. planning a week of meals and a week of how I will treat my family

9. Oatmeal chocolate chip cookies with Madeline

10. Andrew praying for our week in the light of the fire, the children quiet in the holy

What delights did you feast on today?

Joining Ann Voskamp and continuing to count the gifts:

 

and writing in community with Laura Boggess here: