How The Land Leads Me to Worship

My husband grew up in rural Minnesota, while I was raised in the suburbs. When we were dating, I loved visiting his family’s farm! ‘What a blessing to have this life,’ I’d tell myself as I looked out the window over the endless fields. ‘I’d never take it for granted if I got to live here.’ When we were married, we settled into life in that same community. A new marriage brings with it a healthy dose of change – as two imperfect, messy (but still certainly in love!) humans learn to live together and do the whole two-lives-becoming-one thing. I knew that marriage would teach me about Christ’s love. But something I never anticipated when I settled into this area was how the landscape itself would continue to tug at my heart and bring me closer to my Creator. After all, we can look at a pretty picture and talk about how the heavens declare God’s glory… but to live it? To really, truly stand in and under it? That is something else.

Living where we do, we’re given countless opportunities to worship God the Creator. All you have to do in rural Minnesota is lift your eyes up, and immediately you’re struck with awe. Daily we are blessed with quiet fields, gentle breezes, peaceful dirt roads, hidden creeks, mourning doves, brilliant colors, and endless skies…oh, these endless skies! Daily I am drawn to thank and praise the One who made me and made all of this.

Psalm 19:1-2 says:

The heavens declare the glory of God;

   the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

Day after day they pour forth speech;

   night after night they reveal knowledge.

And what hits me – hard – about this passage is the attitude of awe and joy and CELEBRATION that affects King David’s writing! The skies proclaim God DAY after DAY, and has the author grown tired of it? Is it the new normal or becoming even slightly dull? Not at all! All those years ago, Christ’s birth was announced in such a way that the earth could not help but take notice! But let’s take a cue from the heavens that God spins and paints for us daily; instead of keeping our faith quiet, let’s allow it to excite us every day of our walk with Him! May we live with a sense of joy and a whole lot of I-just-want-to-dance as we live in celebration of the One who gave us the greatest gift.

God speaks to us in so many ways, regardless of where we live. What around you leads you to worship in your daily life?