I woke up to the sound of a million finger tips tapping on glass.  Clouds overhead, water-filled and frozen, spilled their snow and ice on the hills and elk and college students spending the weekend with us here in Estes Park, Colorado.  And suddenly, I’m Rich Mullins, all amazed and poetic and maybe even a little cheesy.  I don’t care.  I could write songs today.  It’s more than beautiful here.

imageHere in this frozen sanctuary, mountains for walls, frothy silver clouds for ceiling, I’m stunned by the scope of creation outside the cul-de-sac.  I’m happy.  Not because of where I am but because being here I’m more aware than usual of everything good and beautiful in the world.  Why does nature do that to some of us?  Why don’t I make more time to walk in it?  Some saint once said that if he looked at creation long enough God looked back.

And this morning He’s talking back too.

Here in all this perfect beauty a man is on the stage making liberal use of words like “imperfect”, “wicked”, “depraved”, and “sinful”.  The paradox isn’t lost on me.  There’s something, for me, about the collision of beauty and busted that grabs my heart and mind with both hands and demands their attention. The contrast is brutal.  But the beauty also works to console and inspire me, to make me long for and realize what God is making of me: beauty.

I’m surrounded by what God is turning me into.

The passage being taught this morning makes more sense against the backdrop of all this potent contradiction.  Psalm 51 is a song that’s meant a lot to me and was even reinterpreted in my song Amen.  It says…

1 Have mercy on me, O God,

according to your unfailing love;

according to your great compassion

blot out my transgressions.

2 Wash away all my iniquity

and cleanse me from my sin.

3 For I know my transgressions,

and my sin is always before me.

4 Against you, you only, have I sinned

and done what is evil in your sight,

so that you are proved right when you speak

and justified when you judge.

5 Surely I was sinful at birth,

sinful from the time my mother conceived me.

6 Surely you desire truth in the inner parts;

you teach me wisdom in the inmost place.

7 Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean;

wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.

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Series: None, Stories From The Road
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