Just some early morning thoughts from me to you…

“Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given.”
John 1: 16 (NIV)

“When I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers—the moon and the stars you set in place—what are mere mortals that you should think about them, human beings that you should care for them? Yet you made them only a little lower than God and crowned them with glory and honor.”
Psalm 8:3-5 (NLT)

Children are amazing. 

Besides being precious gifts of God, they provide all of us with a snapshot of a sense of wonder we each may have one time claimed.

A passion and sense of wonder manifesting itself in a belief that they can do most anything to which they set their precious little minds and hearts.

Major league baseball player, artist, ballet dancer, or doctor healing less-fortunate children around the world. 

Maybe even something like climbing the face of bookshelves over a tile floor, like our younger granddaughter, Ellie, age four at the time, was known to do.

But then they begin to have cold water poured upon their dreams, passions, and lives by older, more rational, skeptical, and too-often-defeated adults, suggesting they need to be more practical and think more realistically. Forget about going to Mars simply because it’s there.

Like the junior high school student and a pretty good athlete by all other accounts, who loved baseball. The young man was told by his father, that he wasn’t a very good athlete and wouldn’t be that good of a player. 

So, he should really spend his time on other things.

And when that happens, our sense of wonder loses its wonder and potential, and our passions are drained of hope. We may begin to wander through life a bit defeated. Lost. Doing whatever we can to try to prove ourselves worthy in some way. Living days of light, with too much darkness.

But then God. Somehow, somewhere. The God who has never lost sight of us, even if we hadn’t yet turned to Him. 

God calls our name. Because we matter to Him. 

God taps on our shoulder, and steps into our world and begins to bring light back into the darkness.

And where we have fallen short along the way, His grace lifts us, frees us from the past, and sets us back on a path to start again, with Him. 

To dream, to wonder, to reclaim the God-given passions He instilled within us when He knit us in the womb.

In his song, “God You Are,” Josh Baldwin of the group “We Are Messengers” shares a glimpse of the God who is always lifting us and throwing us back into life, when he shares, in part—

“When I was young, You called my name, I tried to run but still You came,
And You stepped into the dark, ’cause that’s just the kind of God You are.
When heaven seems beyond my reach, You still see eternity in me.
You’re turning ashes into art, ’cause that’s just the kind of God You are.
It’s in the empty tomb, it’s on the rugged cross.
Your death defying love, is written in Your scars.
You’ll never quit on me, You’ll always hold my heart,
‘Cause that’s the kind of God You are.”

God created you, and me, to reach for the stars, to dream, and to live life with a sense of wonder, a sense of “Why Not?”

The world will try to splash cold water on all of that.

But the God who created you and me, will always lift us and restore our sense of wonder to reach for all He created us to be. 

So, when we come to the end of our journey here, we will have left a legacy marked by having reached our full God-given potential and purpose.

With the God of who we are.

The God of who we were created to be.

The God who says—We matter!   

In His Name–Scott

Be comforted and encouraged by this video and singing by Josh Baldwin of the song “God You Are.”