Sometimes we forget that God is the the God of the all of it.
We think that the ‘spiritual things’ are the important things – these are the things that should fill our lives, our contemplations, our focus.
We wander away from wandering in the perfect garden He created. We forget that it was He who came in the cool of the evenings to wander with us.
Wander – a physical activity
in the garden – a physical place
we limit our world instead of living it limitlessly.
There is not separation between the physical and the spiritual to God. This is the God who made with his very hands the beings we are. Surely when a potter casts a mug, adding details, smoothing out the lip just so and glazes it in in all her favourite colours – the potter is not only interested in the tea she will drink from it. The form and the function fit together and both lend beauty and delight to the other.
There is no secular and spiritual activity to the One.
God is in all.
The mountains and the feet that walk them.
The laughter and the belly it springs from.
The hands and the bread it bakes.
All of it generously handed to us – a gift to enjoy.
… and in all our wisdom
… in our considerable position of privilege
we deny the very gifts we were given and search instead for some strange ‘spiritual zone’ in which to function.
So instead of exploring all of life with the life-giver
instead of living abundantly with arms wide open inviting Him to see us loving it
we cloak ourselves in an awkward mantle and pretend we are only interested in the ‘spiritual’ – as we have defined it
in doing so we limit his Presence in all of it
we shut out his Peace for all of it
we miss out on hearing his Delight in the abundant life he offers to us
The whole earth, the micro, the majestic, the mundane and the marvellous – he is in The All of It.
All of it from him to enjoy, all of it for us to share together.
Miriam Jessie 