"Can you see it?"
Below is an adaptation from a blog post, I originally wrote on October 30, 2013...
“Can you see it?”
A couple of posts ago, I shared that “our job” as parents, is to love our children. Simple enough, right? We naturally have a love for our children, don’t we? Absolutely. We definitely have a natural affection & innate connection with these precious “little bundles of joy”, often times the moment they are placed, tightly swaddled, into our arms; beholding our little ones for the very first time. For many, we even feel this deep affection & an abiding connection to them, even before they are born.
However, do we love our children though? Meaning, taken as an action verb, do we: “See the truth of who they (& we) are, & act according”?
Do we act in a manner, & interact with our children, in a way that honors the truth of who they (& we) really are?
If not, why? Why do we not see the truth of who they (& we) are? And, if we do have some “sight” – to whatever level that may be, then why do we not consistently act in such a way as to honor them?
I took these two photos above a couple of years ago. Believe it or not, I almost missed this! It took my oldest daughter’s exclamation from the back seat of the car -“Can you see that?!”, to pull me out of my own thoughts, & see the incredible, natural beauty right in front of me. I had never before seen such a thing! We parked the car & just sat their watching this “rainbow winged cloud”, truly awe-struck at the beauty of what we were seeing.
At another time, I beheld a different “beauty of nature”. This one was a lot harder to miss!
Above is a photo of a “tornado”. (Yes, here in So. Utah we had an “official tornado” touch down, in late August 2011. Although it was far from anything you’d see in Kansas!) My oldest son & I watched this touch down, only one field away from our home. The feeling of beholding something like this, so close, was simply AWE-SOME – in the most accurate sense of the word.
Even more awe-inspiring, was what we saw next...
Right before this HUGE dark funnel of spinning dirt & field debris reached our soon-to-be neighbors land where they, at that very moment, were out working on building their home; we watched it literally dissipate (the feeling of which was palpitate-able in the air!) & transform from a black, ominous, massive vortex, to a light, translucent, spinning funnel of air. It then swept across our land, where you see in the photo, it seeming to be nothing more than a (still quite powerful!) very tall, “BIG dust devil”. It left as quietly as it had come, leaving no sign of it even visiting; except for a few knocked over scarecrows in our watermelon field. It left our animals (as you can see in the photo) & ours, as well as our neighbors, property unharmed. This picture above was taken after it had touched down, & as it had began to dissipate, then began moving towards crossing the road to our fields.
Although both were vivid displays of the beauty of this creation we get to be a part of, the experience of beholding the later left quite a different impression!
Rewind few years earlier……
In 2008, I received an email containing the “Top Ten Astronomers Picks”, up to that time, of photo’s taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Here are a the top 3….
#1: The Sombrero Galaxy – 28 million light years from Earth – was voted best picture taken by the Hubble telescope. The dimensions of the galaxy, officially called M104, are as spectacular as its appearance. It has 800 billion suns and is 50,000 light years across.
#2 favorite – “The Ant Nebula”
In third place, is Nebula NGC 2392, called ‘Eskimo’ because it looks like a face surrounded by a furry hood. The hood is, in fact, a ring of comet-shaped objects flying away from a dying star. Eskimo is 5,000 light years from Earth.
And my personal top 4 favorites (I couldn’t pick just three!)….
# 8 (on their list)- "Starry Night", so named because it reminded astronomers of the Van Gogh painting. It is a halo of light around a star in the Milky Way.
#9 – two merging galaxies in the Canis Major constellation.
# 10 – “The Trifid Nebula”
And last, but not least, #7 - "The Perfect Storm", a small region in the Swan Nebula, 5,500 light years away, described as ‘a bubbly ocean of hydrogen and small amounts of oxygen, sulfur and other elements’.
In all the photo’s above, we see very different, but all truly magnificent, expressions of “God’s Handiwork”. Some of these we can readily see with the eye alone, & still others, we have to rely on a little extra “support” to be able to behold. Consider the magnificent miracle of the a red geranium - what you see & what you don't at first glance. Or, even more miraculous, the creation, function & existence of each human being - again, that which we can obviously see & that which we may need to look a little further to behold. (Here & here are two interesting articles that attempt to share insight on this point.) The beauty of all these “expressions”, of each creation, is undeniable!
You ask, “What does this all have to do with you & parenting today?”. My answer – EVERYTHING...
(Go to "Quickest way to change a heart" to read part 2 of this LONG post :)
