Stopping to Take In God's Beauty

Recently during a drive home I was in awe of all of the beauty that the coming of spring brings. Driving up through the entrance of my neighborhood my breath was taken away by the beautiful white flowers lining all the trees down the street.  It was as if God himself was laying out a welcome mat just for me welcoming me home and into the new season.  My mind also went to a life changing sermon I have listened to many times before from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  The sermon is entitled "The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life." There are so many levels to this sermon and my intent is not to cover them in this post.  I simply want to point out part of the sermon where King describes how in order to have a complete life we have to reach for God.  That is, that we need God.  He speaks of how we can get so wrapped up in the things of this world that we either miss God or fail to even see his hand.  In the rush of everyday life I could have easily whizzed by all these trees and thought very little of them.  Instead I chose to think of the beauty and glory of God.  He loves us so much and has surrounded us with such beautiful things if we only take time to stop and notice. Below is an excerpt from Dr. Kings speech.  I hope you find it as inspiring as I have.

"Now a lot of people have neglected this third dimension. And you know, the interesting thing is a lot of people neglect it and don’t even know they are neglecting it. They just get involved in other things. And you know, there are two kinds of atheism. Atheism is the theory that there is no God. Now one kind is a theoretical kind, where somebody just sits down and starts thinking about it, and they come to a conclusion that there is no God. The other kind is a practical atheism, and that kind goes out of living as if there is no God. And you know there are a lot of people who affirm the existence of God with their lips, and they deny his existence with their lives. (That’s right) You’ve seen these people who have a high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds. They deny the existence of God with their lives and they just become so involved in other things. They become so involved in getting a big bank account. (Yeah) They become so involved in getting a beautiful house, which we all should have. They become so involved in getting a beautiful car that they unconsciously just forget about God. (Oh yeah) There are those who become so involved in looking at the man-made lights of the city that they unconsciously forget to rise up and look at that great cosmic light and think about it—that gets up in the eastern horizon every morning and moves across the sky with a kind of symphony of motion and paints its technicolor across the blue—a light that man can never make. (All right) They become so involved in looking at the skyscraping buildings of the Loop of Chicago or Empire State Building of New York that they unconsciously forget to think about the gigantic mountains that kiss the skies as if to bathe their peaks in the lofty blue—something that man could never make. They become so busy thinking about radar and their television that they unconsciously forget to think about the stars that bedeck the heavens like swinging lanterns of eternity, those stars that appear to be shiny, silvery pins sticking in the magnificent blue pincushion. They become so involved in thinking about man’s progress that they forget to think about the need for God’s power in history. They end up going days and days not knowing that God is not with them. (Go ahead)"


If you would like to read or listen to this sermon in its' entirety please visit the following link:
 The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life