Moody Thinking

Forgive the time between posts, but I am researching for/writing my thesis and that has consumed any spare writing. However, I am in Salt Lake City after a few days in Vegas and feeling reflective.

The Haitian disaster is heart-breaking. There are few words to describe the horror those people are facing. However, I have been encouraged by the incredible outpouring of donations and the response of so many people. In the worst of times, God often shows his grace in the midst of people helping.

There is an interesting difference between the two cities I have visited this week. Las Vegas was an interesting city to visit. The architecture is magnificent. Our conference was attached to the Venetian and I would go upstairs to eat and walk outside… except that I was still indoors. The sky was painted like the hours before dusk on a partly cloudy day.Vegas presents a picture of beauty, but it is just that, an image.

Salt Lake City has picturesque views of snow covered mountains that leave me speechless. This beauty is not an imitation, but reality. No matter how much man can try to imitate the beauty of creation, there will be nothing but pictures.

I am not criticizing the work of those in Vegas, which is quite beautiful. I am simply in awe of the greatness of the Great Artist. And to think that this same God came to earth to die and save those who rejected him. Great Art and the Greatest Story of all time.

Thanks for indulging my thoughts.

Thanks to some of Donald Miller’s works, I have been reading the Bible from a different perspective lately. It seems that we have now taken the Bible and have run it through the filter of how it can improve our lives, thus we make God’s word about us instead of about him. So the new perspective is to read the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, not from a “what can I get out if it” perspective, but from a “What does this tell me about God” perspective.

I have been more fulfilled since starting to read the Bible this way than ever before. For once, I am not the center of the universe. God is. Unfortunately, we are so caught up in ourselves that we immediately take God’s story about himself and dissect it into the best benefit for us.

When we become the center of the story; we are immediately committing idolatry, acting as though God’s entire purpose it to make us happy. We have to see God for who he really is… the all powerful, unchanging, King of the universe. Our proper posture is worship of him, not assuming that he exists for us.

Now this all sounds good, and I think most of us would agree that God needs to be the center. However, I think we tend to focus on what we get out of God instead of God himself. We need to check our thinking and make sure God is the center. God has done so much for us, and we should thank him and worship him because of his goodness.

But we must be careful to worship the giver and not the gifts. Reading the Bible has become seeing God’s story. What tremendous mercy that we are called into God’s story!