God of the Small Details

First of all, I need to tell you that Heaven gained an amazing soul this morning. My Uncle Tom, who had some of the strongest and most encouraging faith I’ve ever seen, passed away very suddenly today. He has been reading all my blog posts and encouraging me to live for God. Just six days ago, he commented on my last post, “I, too, marvel at what the master painter does with the skies. No matter when you look toward them, you see His awesomeness.” It would mean a lot if you would pray for my aunt and the rest of our family as we go through this time of mourning together. This post is dedicated to you, Uncle Tom. I know you’ll enjoy Heaven.

This is a follow-up to my last blog post about the heavens. Here it is if you didn’t read it yet: God of the High Heavens So, in the heavens post, I wrote about how we can see God in the big details of earth, like in the sunsets and the stars. The other neat thing about God’s beauty is that although he designed the intricate pattern of the vast heavens, he also designed the smallest of creation–my favorite being the blending of colors on fall leaves. Last Sunday, I went on a hike, and the leaves were BEAUTIFUL. On the way back down, I collected all the prettiest ones to bring home because I didn’t want the colors of fall to come to an end. These are my leaves that I found! Aren’t they beautiful!?

I’ve had them pressed in my giant AP English book (shhh, don’t tell my teacher), and they still hold their colors a week later! And it amazes me how different each leaf is, just like how God made each of us so different.

Each leaf that falls off of a tree looks unique, but they all belong to the same tree. They all make up one living body. Do you see where I’m going with this? We are the leaves. Each of us makes up a part of the body of Christ. Our lives may look completely different from each other, but we all still belong to the same family tree. Haha, get it?! We all take in our nutrients that we need to live and prosper through our tree, Jesus Christ. He is who supplies us with energy and gives us the ability to live each and every day. When we are connected to Him, we are full of health and energy. This is when we are in communion with other believers and with God–when we go to church or small groups, or read our Bible and pray, we are alive with Christ. However, when we don’t stay connected, we slowly start to lose nutrients, and begin to shrivel up, until we lose our connection completely and fall off. It’s so easy to get disconnected from our Father when we get distracted with the things of the world.

I’m sure you are ready for me to stop comparing us to dead leaves, but I have another similarity. So, you can see in the picture how the dead leaves have lots of little broken places and holes… that’s just like us too. Those are all the little places where life has weathered our heart, just like storms take a toll on the leaves. Each time someone hurts us, our heart breaks just a little. We might still look beautiful on the outside, but the inside is completely broken sometimes. Here’s where we stop being like the leaves though. Unfortunately for them, once they fall of the tree, they die and don’t get another chance. But we do. When we lose our connection with the Tree of Life, our Heavenly Father, we can pray and that connection is healed. We can pray and that broken place in our hearts is mended back together. We have hope that is found only in the Father, and that is what makes us truly unique as human beings. We need to be so thankful for God’s grace that allows us to have second chances.

I hope you have a blessed Sunday and rest of the week! Will you pray with me?

Heavenly Father, thank you for making us like leaves in that you designed us to be alive and well when we are connected to you, the tree of life. But most importantly, we thank you for being the God of second chances, so when we fall away from you, we can pray and be connected with you once again. We love you, Father.  In Jesus name, Amen. 

Here are some more of the pictures I took on our hike up Spy Rock last weekend!

This is the path up the mountain!

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This one is my favorite!

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There’s a breathtaking 360 degree view from the top of the rock!

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