Devotional

We love all the Bible story books and devotionals that Starr Meade has written.  We recently finished God's Mighty Acts in Salvation which was a study of Galatians and now started God's Mighty Acts in Creation.  Here is a sampling from one of the introductory devotionals

Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
And only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit around it and pluck blackberries.
                             Elizabeth Barrett Browning (from "Aurora Leigh")



 "Earth is full of things that constantly remind us of God.  The Bible uses many illustrations from creation.  God is a rock.  Jesus is a vine.  It isn't that God looks around at what he has made, thinking, Hmm.  What could I use to illustrate my holiness?  I know!  I'll use light!  Rather, God created the light as something he would use to help us understand his perfect, sinless nature.  God built into the universe many such things to help us know him better." 


The devotional continues by reminding us that all creation should cause us to stop and take notice of God, because everything in it reveals something of God to us.  Some people see it and "take off their shoes" and "the rest" see in creation only what is in it for them.  Creation never leads them to worship because they don't "see" God and his attributes in what he has made.  



 The end of each devotional has a section entitled "As for me and my house..." which includes additional scripture passages, prayer suggestions, ideas for activities, or just questions to think about.   The night we read this was the night of the big blizzard.  The kids were instructed to look outside and see what they could about God in nature.  They came up with the following:  "Snow is white and pure just like God."  "God cleanses us white as snow."  "Wind reminds us of the Holy Spirit which is said to be like the wind."  "The wind also reminds us of God's power."  How awesome if we could be reminded to do this every day!  Then we tried to think just off the top of our heads how many things God's Word uses from nature to describe or illustrate a truth.  Our list included water, rock, sheep, shepherd, hills, grass, flowers, eagle, trees, fruit, branch, stump, stars, sand, yeast, mustard seed, wheat and chaff, and many more.



 You can read this entire devotional entry and several others if you click on "Look inside" on Amazon.  I promise you won't be disappointed!