The Great I Am In The Great Outdoors

We've recently been blessed to spend some free time in the great outdoors.  I never cease to be amazed at the wonder of God's creation...It often leaves me speechless.  Yet one thing I can manage to "say" is that it is here where I find the Great I Am, the One and only God who created the universe.  Next to the Sacraments, it is where I find heaping measures of peace.  

Words can hardly describe the beauty in nature that is vast, yet simple.  It is true that "Simple things make us happy because they take us beyond time.  They just smell eternal."~Peter Kreeft~
I ask myself why we don't take time to enjoy the simple, more often?...After all, it is here where the window to our soul opens wide, ready to receive grace, like much-needed fuel for our life's journey.

Spending a little time with nature reminds us that we really do need to make more time to appreciate the world around us, just waiting beyond our doorsteps...The Great I am beckons.  He calls us to Himself in more ways than one.

This poem came flying out of my heart and on to paper during one of my recent Holy Hours... 
The Monstrance Outside The Door...
All of nature is a monstrance that holds the very heart of God.  His hand in creation lies right before our eyes, yearning for us to gaze upon it in wonder.

His majesty enthroned on the altar steps out into the open for all to see, hear, feel, and touch.

The tiny, white, host, makes Himself known.

Yet how many still do not see Him?

Like a canvas, He opens His arms to welcome all of us.

The magnitude of His landscape is impossible to discriminate. A natural monstrance that holds God Himself is right before our eyes, just outside our door. His face is eternally exposed.

Heavenly grace bursts through the golden gate, cascading down into our souls.

He seeks us in our brokenness and washes us with a wonderful flood of love and mercy.

Each inhale and exhale can be a spiritual communion, a cleansing, a constant prayer of thanksgiving.

Behold, the Savior of the world...

Come, let us praise Him.

All of nature is a monstrance that holds the very heart of God.

Come, let us adore Him.

Our summer has been blessed with many wonders...

both large and small.

 Our beautiful Church teaches us that God calls each of us to Christian Beatitude, that our true happiness come from God alone, the source of every good and of all love.

  We are invited to purify our hearts of bad instincts and to seek the love of God above all else.  It teaches us that true happiness is not found in riches or well-being, in human fame or power, or in any human achievement, or indeed in any creature, but in God alone. (CCC 1718-1723) How blessed we are that He comes to us in many forms, daily, that we might see His face. 

"Because of God's goodness towards us, and because He can do all things, he goes so far as to grant those who love Him the privilege of seeing Him..." (CCC 1722)

We hope to carry these moments in our hearts as a reminder that the Great I Am is always waiting for us, especially when we open our eyes to see Him in all things, all around us... 

It is only in stepping out of our world that we truly SEE!