Life is but a grand paraphrase, plagiarized from those around us then compiled and rewritten from our point of view. What is your source material?
As I travel through life I find myself picking up pieces of knowledge from many sorts of places. These seemingly diffuse items line up into lessons if I just pay attention.
Envision walking down a crowded street with all of the areas of your life lined up like so many shops on each side of the road. There to your right is the TV store with hundreds of screens stacked beside and on top of each other, each one tuned to a different station. Add to that the radio station next door with as many receivers commingling music with their amplified clamor roaring like a waterfall. Ahead is a sidewalk café with those you will meet today, conversations overlapping and intertwining. Their words forming a cloud that drifts into the street.
Your work life is represented along this throughway as the bustling unnamed souls on the sidewalk, hurrying by, bumping into you as they hasten to their diverse destinations. The towering buildings across the street that block the light from the sun are todays troubles you just can’t seem to shed. Moving slowly by on the street are the things you would enviously have if you only had the means. The next shop is the dessert store where your gluttonous desires can be fulfilled to overflowing. The items in this shop are glorious, sensuous, stunning, magnificent... and attainable. They can not only be obsessed over but consumed until the pain of envy is but a small distraction.
Each step you take, every vacuous face you look into, is speaking into your life with sights and sounds that overwhelm your senses… but you cannot stop. Even in this clutter and haste that we call life, God is speaking to you. Are you able to slow down enough to listen? Look patiently into each of the things in your life as points on a masterful impressionistic painting. Allow God to combine the drifting words into inspirational sentences. Let him show you the beauty thrown by the shadows of your fears. Permit him to point out the face in the crowd that is tinged with sadness and ask what you can do to help.
Combine the sights and sounds of the urgent until they become like thunderous waves on a beautiful beach. Drink in the peacefulness of a life slowly embraced. Turn your face to the again visible sunshine, and let His light warm your soul. If you allow Him, God will bring you to a place where you can see the majesty of the symphony he is daily creating, and your part in it.
