Another beautiful August day, with fog rising off the pond, the sky a clear, pale blue with golden edges as the sun nears the horizon. It is quiet and peaceful, a cool 52 degrees at 6:15.
Praise be to you, Lord, for your goodness and graciousness displayed in the beauty around us. As I walked along the pond yesterday, the sun rose, sending shafts of light to sparkle on the water and bring a golden glow to the leaves on the trees. The little white and blue flowers of weeds growing at the road’s edge were decorated with drops of dew shining in the newly born light of morning.
You are such a lover of beauty, Lord, making even the mundane magically beautiful in the start of a new day. I praise you, Lord, for how this reflects your character: every single aspect is beautiful beyond anything in this world. You are magnificently magnanimous, gloriously good, wholly holy, unconditionally kind, powerfully patient and perfectly pure. And each of these aspects has various further forms of beauty, such as we see in water: gleaming rain drops hanging on a wire fence; the still surface of a pond, mirroring all around; the clear water of a babbling brook; the crispness of frost on winter grass; the intricate design of snowflakes as they land on my mitten; the hard, smooth and dark surface of ice on a lake; the sparkling shaft of an ice cycle in the rays of the rising sun.
So is your multifaceted faithfulness in which you are persistent, patient, powerful and positive. You have a plan and will bring it to pass. You are faithful to your promises, to your kindness, to your correction, to your punishment of sin and rewarding of obedience, to your judgment of the world in righteousness, truth and love so that evil will be eliminated and heaven will be pristinely pure.
You are majestically beautiful, mightily trustable and multifaceted in patience. I praise you for revealing your character to us in creation, in your Word, in your work in our lives, in your provision and protection.
As it says in Isaiah 40:10,11 “Look! The Lord GOD comes with strength, and his arm rules for him. Look! His reward is with him, and his payment accompanies him. Like a shepherd, he tends his flock. He gathers the lambs in his arms, carries them close….”
To you, Lord, belongs all glory, praise and worship. May you be honored today as I seek to see all the beauty in the common, the normally unnoticed aspects of this day and remember to give thanks for the steady stream of your goodness into my life.
