What the Sun, Wind, and the Golden Gate Bridge taught me about God's Love

Today was a very busy day which was much more active than the past few days have been. We started our day with devotions then headed out to San Fran to practice more directions and visit a few more of our ministry sites. After touring the outside of these locations we did what is called the "Golden Gate Bridge Walk", which at it's most basic form is a silent prayer walk from one side of the GG Bridge to the other. Now during this walk I really felt like God revealed Himself in a few powerful ways:


The first was a reference to Genesis 1 when it refers to the Spirit of God hovering over the waters. It was a bright, beautiful, windy day as we crossed the bridge and you could see the formations of the clouds "hovering over the water" and I really felt the presence of God in that moment. I thought to myself, God doesn't only speak to us through His word, but through all nature and created things; we really do ourselves a disservice when we shut down to the possibility of learning more about the character of God through everyday life. But then I also thought to myself, if I hadn't spent time in the word and known about that particular verse in Genesis then I also would have missed out on a great opportunity to see my God in action. It's a delicate balance, and such an amazing representation of a glimpse of who God is and His presence everywhere... even here with me in San Francisco.


The other thought came from the Aesop's Fable (I think) about the wind and the sun. The Mandie-ized version of the story is that two kids were walking through a mountain pass and the wind looked over to the sun and bet him that he could make the kids take their coats off- I don't remember what was at stake, but it was a monumental bet to be sure. So the sun took the bet, and the wind blew and shook as hard as he could and the two kids just clung even tighter to their coats to keep warm. When it was the sun's turn he shone brightly and beamed until the two children got so warm that they took their coats off. Now, my thought here is how many times do we as Christians blow and huff and puff and attempt to stuff our beliefs and "religion" down the world's throat, but all that does is make them want to hold tighter to whatever it is they've been holding onto. We need to beam with and shine the love of Christ to warm them into the kingdom.

That seems really ill formed and kind of lame now, but I wanted to share it with whoever may be "listening" out in blogger world.