A New View

As I was learning from the owl that God was going to be revealing Himself in new and different ways in the season of retirement on the farm, there was also a growing awareness of the place where God had put me for what was unfolding as the present moment of my life.  As far back as I can remember the church had been at the center of my life.  This was even more true in the ministry years when the sanctuary of the church was no further away than the next door.     

On the farm the church was no where to be seen.  And while I preached at a small church ten miles up the road for four years, it was a place to which I went to preach on Sunday, not the center of my life each day.  All those working years it had seemed that the church was the sacred place in the midst of a secular world.  On the farm what I came to understand was that I lived not near the church, but in the midst of a great magnificent cathedral which was only a small part of the creation.  

The new place where God was experienced in worship was not bounded by brick walls, but by the distant horizons where heaven touched earth.   No longer did I walk from the sacred space into the secular space.  Instead, every time my foot touched the ground, it touched holy ground.  It touched what bore the imprint of the creative hand of the Creator so there could be no other way of seeing it and interacting with it.  What unfolded after the revelation of God through the wise old owl was a deepened awareness of the holy in every part of the creation and the sense of being blessed beyond measure to be immersed daily in it.