‘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,
And daub their natural faces unaware.’ (Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Lee)
I have spent the last while traveling and gathering, and this thought from Elizabeth Barrett Browning has imprinted in my soul just a little bit more.
Everywhere I go there are beauties of creation.
In every gathering there are illustrations of love.
Small tastes of the grandeur and glory that is Heaven.
Because I am a visitor, I notice things that have become ordinary to those who live among them everyday.
Who are busy picking blackberries and missing the wonder.
I do that, too, in my own ordinary places.
But I want to open my eyes to God in everything. The common and the unusual. The necessary and the novel.
I want to ‘take off my shoes’-to see the holiness evident in the world-in reverence and awe at all that God has given us to remind us of Him.
Of Home.
Breathless at the splendor of the Creation and the Creator.
At what we left and what awaits.
And at what He filled our lives full of while we’re away and while we wait.
Crammed into every part of Earth so that we would know light and life and beauty when their opposites also exist.
Each moment and substance a witness of the astonishing goodness and generosity of the greatest love.
‘Afire with God.’
