The earth is filled with his glory (December thoughts)

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;
    the whole earth is full of his glory.”
-Isaiah 6:3

I have a lot of thoughts. Everyone does, I suppose. Here is a collection of them.

Thought one: I need to intentionally create beautiful moments in my life.
The other day as I was at work, I peeked out the window and happened to notice the view. It was an incredible, peaceful crisp scene of the morning light over the Bay and Cape Blomidon. Just seeing the beauty of that panorama made my day a little bit better. It is easy for me to forget the beauty and glory in the world, on days when I am on my third cup of coffee, have sore feet and feel like the time I need to accomplish everything I need to do in the day exceeds the number of hours in the day.

But God has blessed me with some beautiful moments in this life lately, the sort of moments I am realizing I need to make sure I have more often. Like laying in a trailer in the old orchard, watching the stars with my sister. Like running with abandon through the new fresh snow. Like raising my voice to echo praises along with the grand piano and some good friends in a study hall (like a cathedral) in the wee hours of the morning. Sometimes these moments just happen, but often they do not. And I want to make sure they happen, because they help remind me of God's beauty and glory, which the whole earth is full of. 

Just a beautiful moment

Next thought: Worship is all over
You may have noticed, I really like worship music. I listen to it all the time and I love the sweet times that my friends and family spend in musical worship. We do it whenever we can: in my living room at home, with my dad on the guitar and my brother on the piano, or maybe in the woods behind the university, or perhaps just in various friends' rental units.  I love to raise my weak, occasionally off-key voice to join the instruments and the others singing. Someone plays the guitar, usually, and someone the keyboard if there is one, and the percussion, and once in a while there is a violin or something as well. But I do not know how to play any instruments (except for the bagpipes, sort of, but that's another story). And my voice is not really anything to write home about. So I wonder my place in all of it. But then I realized this wonderful truth: God is really big. And he is really good and really creative. And he created music and music is awesome and I love it. But he also created other things. Like language. And I think I can use language to worship him. Oh, you may have a guitar, or a drum with which you worship. Me, I have a pen. Worship to God is not limited to only music. It is so much more expansive than that. 

That being said, let's all just appreciate this song.

Penultimate thought: Rejoicing in hope
I have sung the song "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" every Advent season basically since forever. The chorus goes as follows: "Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel/Shall come to thee, O Israel."
I was singing that and then I noticed something interesting: they are rejoicing before Emmanuel (the Messiah) even comes! It is an expectant rejoicing. 
And I had to ask myself: do I rejoice in expectation? Do I praise God for things he has promised but that have not yet occurred?

Final thought: Thirst

As the deer pants for streams of water,
    so my soul pants for you, my God. 
 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
    When can I go and meet with God?
-Psalm 42:1-2

Last night I was thirsty and then I drank some water and then I was amazed by the miracle of the satisfaction of thirst. Because when I am thirsty, all I want is water. Yes, I like coffee and wine and pineapple Fanta but nothing satisfies thirst like water does. It is precisely what I need and when I am thirsty, my favourite food is water. And then I was chatting with a friend about how cool it is that Jesus said he gave water that will cause us to never thirst. 

Nothing satisfies our soul-thirst quite like Jesus. There are things that come close (the pineapple Fantas of spirituality?) but they still leave us with thirst. Jesus satisfies our souls the way water satisfies our tongues. Do you think God specifically created things in the world to be analogies for eternity? Maybe everything is an analogy.

So, here is another song.