Monday, April 10, 2006

Fish

Context: Steere is talking about how, in intercessory prayer, we are oftentimes led to do something for the person for whom we are praying, in addition to praying for them. He adds that we are oftentimes led to make amends in our own lives before we can offer a prayer of petition.

"Prayer is incipient action...Here is the unformed side of life's relationships - the letters to be written, the friends to be visited, the journey to be undertaken, the suffering to be met by food, or nursing care, or fellowship. Here is the social wrong to be resisted, the piece of interpretive work to be undertaken, the command to 'rebuild my churches', the article to be written, the wrong to be forgiven, the grudge to be dropped, the relationship to be set right, the willingness to serve God in the interior court by clear, honest thinking, and the refusal to turn out shoddy work." - Douglas V. Steere

I admit that the above passage may appeal to me so much because of my love of listmaking.

Yesterday our pastor was talking about the glory of God. He said to remember that, no matter how great our present understanding of God's glory is, God is infinitely more glorious. He talked about the amazing detail of creation, how the expanse of the universe is so far beyond our understanding, how to adequately explain one strand of DNA would take 1000 volumes of encyclopedias, how miraculous and incomprehensible the formation of human life is. Then he talked about fish. He said that God only needed to make one kind of fish in order to have fish. Instead, He made fish of all different sizes, shapes, colors, habitats, some striped, some purple, some round, "some with spiky things sticking out". Why? Because, Gordy said, "God's into fish." I thought that was great! God's into fish. And astronomy. And gardening. And acorns. And frogs. (Yes, frogs!) And music. And rocks. And sand. And the color turquoise. And everything else that is true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy. If whatever you're into fits this description (which is from the Bible), I think you can rest assured that God's into it, too. That's so cool...

4 comments:

janenetindall said...

didn't you say frogs are evil??? :)

Chris Tindall said...

That IS really cool - that God's into fish (and everything else...) I never cease to be in awe of the natural world around me, and the creativity of God's creation. It's why seeing the mountains can steal my breath, fresh rain can make me cry, and why being outside (in all weather!) brings me to feel closer to God....

Holly said...

Well, yes, I think I did say that..but I have to admit that frogs really are not evil, since God created them. The creation of frogs is one of those things that I'm just not going to be able to understand until I get to heaven. In the meantime, I'll have to content myself with knowing that God knows best.

Holly said...

We're lucky to live where we do, with such breathtaking examples of that creativity all around us.