The temperature on Saturday reached almost 100 degrees! Not what we normally expect in June in Minnesota. By the time I ate breakfast, it was already in the 80s…so, of course, I had to eat breakfast outside.
I decided I would spend as much as possible of the next 12 hours outside (I believe I’ve mentioned before I’m always cold so I never complain about summer heat). I grabbed my food, phone, and journal and headed out to the deck. After taking off my sandals and getting comfortable, I decided to rewatch a video from the Get Your Life Back study and laughed at the title, which I had missed the first time: “Get Outside.”
In the video, John Eldredge describes beauty as a “grace that God has given us for the restoration of our souls.”
In a world full of technology and life indoors where everything is artificial (and even times toxic to us), getting outdoors exposes us to real sunlight, nature sounds like the cardinals that live in my backyard, amazing fragrances from the neighbor’s lilacs that are still in bloom, light breezes across my skin, and, when barefoot, contact with the very earth God created.
Eldredge also instructed the viewer to go outside for five minutes (done!), find simple expressions of beauty, and then pause and receive them. I was supposed to turn off my phone but I wanted to use the camera so I took it with me. Into my garden I walked to find God’s beauty – to restore my soul.
And that was just by mid-morning Saturday. I also spent most of Saturday afternoon barefoot when we met friends at the local beach. Let me tell you, 100-degree sand is HOT on bare feet! We did a lot of scampering and hopping all over the place to get to our towels from the water. But I found beauty there too.
A few years ago, one particularly cold December, Cody had a multi-day inpatient stay on the Epilepsy Unit of the children’s hospital. During what turned into a 5-day stay, the temperatures outside dropped to single digits; however, one night after several days in the hospital, I just needed to get outside. I went to the cafeteria for something to drink and, honestly, couldn’t stop my feet from walking out the front door.
I walked (without a jacket) about two blocks and turned around and came back. Yes, it was cold! But it was fresh air, not hospital air. Instead of fluorescent lights, it was darkness with at least the hint of stars. I walked back in the doors and shook myself involuntarily to get the cold off, making the valet laugh. But it had quickened me, putting some life back in my body. It restored me.
Today I read this verse in my morning devotional:
And the commander of the LORD’s army said to Joshua, “Take off your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.” And Joshua did so. ~Joshua 5:15
As I read it, I wondered what if everywhere we walked, we thought of it as holy? Does holy just mean that’s where God is? The garden. The beach. The neurology clinic. The children’s hospital ER in the middle of the night. I can definitely say God has been in all of those places with me.
If God creates beauty to restore us and beauty is everywhere, then God is everywhere and everywhere is holy, sacred, of God. Everything we see has the opportunity to restore us if we could slow down enough to realize its holiness.
I obviously won’t walk into a hospital or clinic barefoot, but I can remind myself that I can walk into even the hardest places in my life believing (or at least trying to believe) that they are holy. I can look for God and His soul-restoring beauty everywhere I walk.
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