Mary at Mahseh working away!

I looked over at Mary furiously typing away, hunched over her keyboard eyes locked on the screen. I had been in the same position myself for the last 90 minutes sitting next to her at the desk. We were at the beautiful Mahseh retreat center having been blessed  to find this secluded haven on Lake Bruce in Indiana. With a new study launching in just a few months, we pushed our minds into high gear, brainstorming ideas.

Our desk nestled in front of a bank of windows overlooking the lake, and I glanced up transfixed by the scene in front of me. Unnoticed by us, God was mixing his palette of paints and dusting his sky canvas with gorgeous hues. Crimson reds blended with tangerine oranges as the sun sank in a fiery ball.

“Mary, look!” I said and pointed out the window. She looked up and gasped, bleary-eyed from her work. While the sun dropped below the horizon, we both soaked up God’s latest masterpiece.

“We almost missed that,” Mary said. “God plunked us down in the middle of all this beauty, and we almost missed it because we were so focused on our work.” She made a bug-eyed look and stared at her screen in a perfect imitation of us over the last few hours.We both giggled at how funny she looked, but the irony wasn’t lost on us.

I wonder how often we go through life oblivious to the gifts God gives us.

We run furiously from task to task, missing people in front of us, nature surrounding us, and the strains of music wafting through the air. God created us with five senses and all too often we forget to use them. We need to remember to pause throughout our day, look up, and notice the intersection of the sacred and the everyday. Because it’s where these two meet that we find the fingerprints of God.

Where have you seen Him today? Share your sighting below.

Recently I was at one of my favorite places in the Midwest, Fernwood. It’s a gem of a nature park in Niles, Mich., where I grew up. My dad and mom, and my sisters Laura, Mary, Carol, and I all met there for lunch. It happened to be snowing that day, and the setting couldn’t have been more beautiful. The lure of the snow was too powerful, and I dashed outside with my camera to snap a few pictures while we waited for our lunch to arrive.

Somehow the world just seems quieter when insulated by a blanket of snow. The only thing I could hear was the twittering of birds as they flitted from tree to bird feeder to tree again, the cardinals a cheerful, scarlet blur against the snow.

I followed the path under my feet as it wound through the trees, opening up beautiful vistas around each corner.

I couldn’t help but feel that I was in my own Sacred Everyday living out Psalm 16:11:

“You will show me the path of life. In Your presence is fullness of joy. At Your right hand are pleasures for evermore.”

God painted a masterpiece that afternoon and let me wander through it. And I am thankful.

Over the weekend, Mark and I were sharing pizza with friends, talking about our family Christmas traditions. One of our friends is from Columbia, and I asked him about how they celebrated Christmas in Columbia when he was a child. It’s so interesting to learn what’s important in other cultures.

In his village, Christmas Eve is the big celebration, marked by fireworks, special food, attending mass, putting up a small outdoor tree, and exchanging gifts. “The gifts, however, don’t go under the tree,” he said. I looked at him waiting for the explanation for this and was touched to hear this memory:

“In our village what was important was the Nativity. All the families would make their own Nativities. We went outside and gathered moss and other materials to build our own nativities. Then we took the time to put it all together. The tree was not the focal point of Christmas, the Nativity was, and the baby Jesus was the reason why we had gifts. We put our gifts around the Nativity, and we exchanged gifts because of Him.”

What a wonderful Sacred Everyday moment. How blessed he is to have years of building nativities with his family that engraved on his heart the real reason for Christmas.

Over the weekend, violent storms pummeled part of the Midwest, including my community. Although the morning started out sunshiny and beautiful, by the time the afternoon rolled around, I definitely had my eye to the sky as angry, black clouds played hide and seek with the sunshine and warning sirens echoed through our neighborhood.

The worst of the storms passed slightly to our north, but some friends of my son, Jesse, weren’t so lucky. Trinity’s family home was hit and partially destroyed by a tornado. The storm took out two rooms of their home and a salon that was also on their property that they used for a home business.

Jesse, Cameron, Trinity, and Heather headed north to see if they could help Trinity’s family, bringing along a pack of water bottles. The area was hit hard, and the four of them ended up joining a crowd of people helping a neighbor whose barn was destroyed. They ordered pizzas for the family and worked in the dark trying to bring some order to the chaos.

Even though Trinity’s family was hurting, they reached out to help others, becoming the hands and feet of Jesus. Bringing hope and healing into despair and destruction.

The message carved in the mud on Trinity’s house is a testament of faith, words of hope in the midst of a storm where The Sacred is intersecting the not so Everyday.

Saturday morning found me zooming along on my bike to the butcher shop for my weekly shopping. There’s something freeing about relying on your own power to get you around the city, and I love pedaling along the Monon Trail whenever I can. A wrong turn on the way home brought me through this neighborhood. Tired from the heavy load in my purple bag, I took a minute to rest under the scarlet maple tree.

It was easy to see God’s creativity everywhere I looked. “It won’t be hard to find my Sacred Everyday here,” I thought. The Sacred blazed brilliantly right into my Everyday morning.  Thanks for

sunshine,

            trees full of color,

                                              the breeze on my face,

                                                                                            crisp autumn air,

                                                                                                                        Butcher shop treats,                               my bike,

                                                                   and a peaceful morning

bubbled through my mind. How often do I miss the simple pleasures of life because I don’t slow down enough to see them? Open my eyes to your Sacred Everyday, Lord. Open my eyes.

Captivating colors

                                                 and

                                                   tempting textures

of luscious yarn never fail to lure me into big or little knitting shops I happily stumble across. Such was the case the other morning, and I, entranced, open the door and follow my eyes to the skeins posing on the shelves.

I walk back and forth weighing my options, considering my ever-growing list of people to receive knitted Christmas gifts. Poking around the shelves, I find a perfect project to knit up quickly. With chunky yarn on big needles, even I, a notoriously s-l-o-w knitter, will finish five of them with time to spare before Christmas.

The bell jingles and the door shuts behind me as I head back to the car. The glinting sun illuminates the display window, stopping me in surprise. A Scripture glistens off the glass. Funny, I hadn’t noticed it on the way in, two of my favorite things juxtaposed like this.

This unexpected gift of scripture and yarn knitted together makes a happy spot in my soul. Why haven’t I ever thought about the work of my hands as being something sacred? Might my hands actually capture a bit of His beauty, reflect a bit of His creativity in every stitch, every pattern I make? My heart says “yes.”

God snuck in this Sacred Everyday at Always In Stitches today. Where have you found yours?

Pray on!