Saturday, September 12, 2015

Stop and Sense the Roses


And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.  Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me—everything you heard from me and saw me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you.

This month is proving to be a very jam packed month. Both my husband and I are away at different times and what with work, the kids' school, painting assignments and conferences my brain is slowly filling up with knowledge.

Last weekend I spent two days learning to see properly. It sounds a bit strange but I learned so much. I see my world differently now. Instead of only seeing a tree I see pale and dark green and shapes of each leaf, the twist and texture of the bark and the shadows that fall and the light that illuminates. I see angles of a sloping roof and the different shades in a flower. I see the silhouette of a bird in flight in the blue sky and the sun shining as a silver lining of every cloud.

When I see a face I see the shapes and rise and fall of every curve. The windows of the face revealing the deep wells of the soul.

Light illuminates form and shows up the beauty of our world.

I can't look at the world the same way I did before. The best part is that by seeing in this way my sketching has improved so much.

You see by judging a book by it's cover we miss the story inside. When we look at an insect and we call it an ant it loses it's mystery. It is an ant and from what we have learned about them in the past is what they do and how they kind of hang out together in colonies and live under the ground. When we look at this creature and really see it for the first time we will notice fine details about that creature we never saw before.

We need to start seeing deeper and wider than we have been. We are missing out by glancing at the world and not seeing it as God sees it.

We are missing the very beauty of God's creation by our business and our narrow and lazy eyes.

What else are we missing by not stopping to be still? Maybe our ears are not hearing very well. We do not understand that hearing is not an external thing but an internal once. The sound enters into your ears and onto your ear drums and sends information to your brain and from you past your brain processes what it hears and send messages to your body. Just like food enters our mouths and we taste and it nourishes so does sound, vision, sensations and scents. They all send messages to your brain about your external world.

What could we learn from life when we stop and meditate or think on the pure. lovely, honourable, lovely, true and admirable. When we stop to see what God has done and hear His voice speaking over His Creation we praise Him and He will give us peace.

We rush around in haste and busyness because we do not stop see clearly. We are going full tilt into every area of our life but we do not stop to hear the sounds around us. We do not stop to see how our Father sees or hear what our Father hears and is saying to us. We don't feel the texture of the clothes on our skin until it irritates us. Until the nails hit the chalkboard and that high pitched squeal ensues we do not hear anything. Until there is a car high-beaming and we getting annoyed we do not see. Until somethings smells like rotten fish and assaults our nostrils we do not smell.

Why is it that we only take notice of our senses when we get annoyed or uncomfortable? Maybe it is because it is far easier to keep our senses of all that is pure and lovely so dumbed down that all we end up doing is complaining and being grumpy about our discomforts.

When we value our senses and the gifts that they are we will experience His Creation in a different way. A new peaceful way of living our lives where we actually live it and not go through it limited.

It is beautiful. Every inch of it. Don't let it go by in a blur. Stop now and sense the Roses.

4 comments:

  1. The class you took sounds wonderful--and I agree with your conclusions. I have had the busy times when my eyes were dull. I have more time in my life now; my children are adults and I have retired from hospital nursing.When one's children are young it takes will power to pause, take in and really see. It is worth it! I'm your neighbor at Sunday Stillness.

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    1. Thank you for stopping by Carol. We as parents need to have that time to slow down and take in the beauty.

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  2. Oh, what a great reminder to s...l...o...w down and to live in the grace given for each moment. I'm in the midst of a time in which I'm focusing on being more present to my family, so I need all kinds of reminders.

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    1. Thank you Michele for your comment. We do need to be so intentional with our time so as not to get caught up into busyness again. Enjoy your family :)

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