The heavens are telling of the glory of God; and their expanse is declaring the work of his hands.

Psalm 19: 1

 

This is the passage that the Spirit of God lead me to reflect on a little over eight years ago during the first two mornings that I was in the hospital recovering from knee surgery. It is interesting how the effects of having pain medication soaking your body impact so many really basic aspects of function. Reading is certainly one of those. The surgeon didn’t work anywhere close to my head, and it would seem reasonable to think that with all of that uncommitted time on my hands, I would be able to at least get in some good reading; yet, I would find myself reading the same sentence over and over, often four or five times in a row, without making any progress through a page.

 

If I had possessed the ability to care about such things, there was something in the ingested medication cocktail that made caring rather unimportant, and this certainly could have become frustrating. Instead, it seemed that God was telling me to slow down, to take in His word more deeply, and to allow His Spirit to speak to my heart from the treasure chest of rich understanding that is behind every single one of those words. I must have read this verse a dozen or more times in two days, and every time through it, God spoke to me in a new way.

 

The Lord’s words of love, provision, care, and strength came drifting out of my surroundings, for they were apparent in the high tech equipment that was monitoring my moment by moment condition (we all did come to agreement that when the heart rate monitor’s alarm went off because I had no heart rate, the monitor was probably wrong, just a bad sensor connection), and in the very low tech hands of the nursing staff as they provided a cold cloth for my head when I was feeling ill. The Lord was present in the first rays of dawn that brought the night sky out of its restful slumber and in the reassuring light from the hallway outside my room that told me that those nurses were there if I had any needs. God’s voice speaks clearly and continually through all elements and aspects of Creation, and He wants us to take the time to look closely at the depth of His love until we can see Him in everything that surrounds us.