“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”
Heyyyy blogger nation!!!! I honestly feel so uncomfortable to be writing this post to an unknown audience but I’m glad you’re here reading it anyway. These next few months of blog posts of mine will be jumbles of thoughts in my attempts to make everything that makes sense (or doesn’t) in my head make sense on paper to other people. It’ll be a journey! The fun irony here is that I’m a communications major but I’ll likely have the most trouble communicating everything I want to say. But maybe the labor of love it what makes this all worth it. (I guess we’ll see!)
Over the past couple of years, Jeremiah 29:13-14 has been so meaningful to me:
“You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back from the place from which I carried you into exile.”
My prayer over the past couple years has been that I would seek God and seek Him with all my heart. I’ve found so much beauty and grace in the fact that God promises that he will let us find him, and that he will carry us home. I came to Raleigh hoping and praying that in God’s kindness I would seek him and find him here in a new way, knowing him better and loving him more because of the place he’s brought me.
Seeking and finding God during my first few weeks here has been such a profound reminder that Earth really is crammed with heaven, as EBB notes in the excerpt at the top of this post. God has been with us at Lake Gaston, by the backyard koi pond, on the New Life Camp basketball court, and everywhere else we’ve stepped foot that I wouldn’t think to mention. It feels like one key discipline of the Christian life is slowing down long enough to pay attention to how and where God shows up in our lives (one poet calls stillness “one of the doors into the temple”).
So I guess this month I’ve been trying to take off my shoes, recognizing that God’s presence is with us because of the work of Jesus. I’m grateful that this program so far has pointed me to the bushes afire with God, and we gather in his presence together. We take off our shoes, aware we’re standing on holy ground, proclaiming before God, “Here I am” as Moses did when God called to him in Exodus 3. Here, God told Moses that he has come down to rescue them, that the cry of his people has reached his ears. Beautiful things have happened and are happening and will happen on holy ground, thank God!
Warmly and gratefully,
Derren
P.S. There’s also a fun symbol here when I imagine taking off my shoes to mean settling in and getting comfortable which IS happening! Raleigh and Apostles and Fellows already feels like home, praise be to God!!