Worship on a bike

It's packing day at the beach. Time to return home to schedules and chores and homework and busyness. Goodbye to waves and sandy feet and lazily sitting in the sun with a great book and eating dinners with everyone in the family at the same time and long, wonderful walks with my daughter. Thank You Lord for the joyous memories! But it's also time to return to friends, home, dog, church, comforting routines, productivity, learning, hot baths, neighbors, and places and people we love and cherish. So despite the packing and cleaning horrors ahead this morning, I choose early this morning to look back with gratitude and ahead with excitement (well, at least with anticipation!).

Before we brush away all the sand and pack away the sunscreen, however, I just have to recall once more the beauty of God's creation here. Yesterday morning early, I went for a bike ride down towards Fort Macon. It is a breathtaking ride down to a totally unsullied part of the beach, surrounded on both sides of the road by thick bushes. On one side of the brush lies the sound and on the other (though you can rarely see it) lies the ocean.

As I rode yesterday, the Lord and I had a worship service. Yes, a worship service on a bike! I simply couldn't believe all the beauty and wonder all around me. Words, at least my paltry words, are utterly inadequate to describe all I saw and felt. Thick, lush bushes interspersed with vibrant pink wildflowers. Verdant green marshes, the water a golden, shimmering reflection of the sky, and little splotches of white among the green were the graceful, long necked birds (herons, I suppose?) Little dark brown bunnies nibbled at the grass. Dark brown squirrels jumped and played beside the road. The wild hilly dunes where I imagined those civil war soldiers so many years ago tramping around, perhaps pausing in their labors to observe the undulating beauty of the waves.

As I thanked the Lord for His extravagant creation, He reminded me that His glories can be praised in this place 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 86,400 seconds every single day. This beauty continues unabated whether we are here or not; whether any person in the world ever sees it all or not. Our God created the limitless wonders of this world simply because He loves to create and produce that which is magnificent and wonderful and amazing. How often we fail to look--really look--and see all that He has made and done for us. Just as we can sometimes take the cross, the redemption of the world by the Son of God, for granted, so we pass by so much of what He does and creates for us every single day.

Forgive us Lord! You created us to worship and in worship, we find satisfaction and joy and meaning. So we can worship on a bike in the midst of the beauty of the beach or we can worship in our homes in the midst of security or we can worship in a prison or a hospital room in the midst of uncertainty or pain. For wherever we are, You are there. 86,400 seconds every day. And tomorrow. And next week. And next year. And next century. Help us to see You Lord. Help us to worship. Help us to put aside the busyness and the anxiety and the what if's that can haunt us, and simply see You and worship. The God of the glorious sea and the majestic mountains and the bustling city and the deepest darkest pit and the loneliest cell. You are there. You will always be there. To God be the glory.