Not What we Deserved

For once, we timed it perfectly. Asherel and I were on the Catawba River with two good friends and our kayaks for exactly the only part of the day that was sunny, and perfect. The rain started in spits and spots as we drove home, and poured in earnest an hour or so later. It was a wonderful day, swimming, finding clams and skipping them on the water, and then sipping slurpies back at the dock while rocking and looking out over the beautiful water. Irresistible beauty and wonder!

The world did not have to be beautiful. It could have been mud and grey drab and noxious sulphur and methane smells rising continually about us. But instead God gave us robin egg blue skies, currents of blue green rivers gurgling and lapping at shores covered with rhododendron, and tiny clusters of red and white wild flowers. He gave us River Birch, fragrant Sassafras, and Slippery Elm trees bending elegant limbs towards the water, as though beseeching us to draw near. He filled our ears with birds singing from cool island depths. All around us, the Heavens declare the glory of God. It did not have to be so breathtakingly beautiful. Why did God create it that way for such a wayward, stubborn people?

When we got back, I read a wonderful Facebook discussion about God's "irresistible grace." One can deny the pull towards perfection, beauty, and the revelation of creation only so long. At some point, it is easier just to succumb, to release all doubt, to fall wondrously into the marvel of creation and pay homage at last to the Creator. After all, He gave us beauty when we deserved ashes.
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For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. (Romans 8:19 NIV)

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. (Romans 1:20 NIV)

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