Sabbatical Day 11
Lori and I are spending the week on Minnesota’s North Shore, about 25 minutes up Highway 61 from Two Harbors. It’s been a good week. We’ve had opportunities to sit and stare at Lake Superior, to read, to write, and to take hikes through state parks.
(Side note: The week after Memorial Day, and before schools get out for the summer, is a great week to visit the north shore. It’s pretty quiet here!)
This has been a good week to stop and take a breath as I’m entering into my sabbatical.
I feel very blessed to have this week away. This has always been a special place for me and for my family. I remember coming up here as a kid. I remember going on canoe trips with my father. I learned from a young age the value of time spent sitting and staring at waves landing on a shore.
There is beauty here that we don’t experience in other places.
A part of the journey of life and faith is to be able to look at God’s creation and to see the beauty in it wherever you are. The North Shore…the mountains…the beach…the desert…the city…it is all a part of God’s creation and there is always beauty in what God makes.
It’s interesting to me that it is the places where we spend the most time, the places where we are most “at home,” where it can be the most difficult to recognize what God is doing. Maybe it’s just that those places we call “home” are also the places we can most easily take things for granted.
It is easy to be amazed by God’s beauty when away. The challenge for us is to see God’s beauty in those places and people that we are exposed to every day.
Because God is at work in all places. There is beauty in all places. There is love in all places. These things are a constant.
The practice of our faith is to look around and see it.
Test Driving Theology 