What a Magnificent View

There is something about standing in the middle of a majestic nature setting that has always moved me.  Whether it was sitting high atop one of the Rocky Mountains and looking from Colorado into Texas and New Mexico, or looking across the vastness of an ocean or simply sitting horseback in the Texas panhandle and looking across the springtime beauty of Texas Cap Rock, every experience has in some way refreshed and redefined my perspective of life.  They remind me that it’s good for the mind and heart to rise above domestic duties, paying bills, making decisions and the routine life moments that can become a grind and see them in the context of the magnificent. 

What’s true on a nature level is true on a spiritual level, too.  We need to see the magnificence of our life in the Spirit to appreciate the many pieces of our spiritual lives in the proper way.  Why?  We sometimes get lost in the minute-by-minute, the details, the minutia of ministry and church life because our memory of the larger spiritual picture grows dim.

I think that’s at least one thing Paul had in mind when he wrote Ephesians.  Ephesians is a spiritual mountain chain.  It is like looking across an ocean in the Spirit.  It’s conceptually vast.  It’s views are breathtaking.  The spiritual vista Paul sets before his readers (and us, too) is nothing short of majestic.  He wants us to see the whole stage of human experience and, more especially, the creation of the church in the larger context of God’s workings in the gospel.  We need that perspective because we can get lost in our lesser stories and their struggles at the expense of God’s larger story. 

Ephesians 2:19-22 is holy ground:

¹⁹So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, ²⁰ built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, ²¹ in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. ²²In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

We need these words.  I think they remind us of something very important.  In the midst of routine tasks, countless meetings, conversations about ministry, and sorting through the occasional skirmishes that we believers can get into over this and that, there is a bigger view of our life together that we need to see.  Everyday we have the privilege of serving on an enormous stage.  We aren’t people who simply go to church.  We are more than a building and a pictorial directory.  We belong to God.  We are His household erected on a magnificent foundation that is coming together stone by stone as the Spirit works in our lives.  We are the greatest architectural project the world has ever known. 

The great thing about majestic views is that long after you walk off the mountain, or drive away from the ocean or put the horse in the stall, you can still remember the colors, the sounds, the impressions and the emotion of the vast beauty that sat for a brief moment before your eyes.  In fact, you can still see it from your office chair, or sitting at a red light, or while mowing the backyard.  More importantly and, “one stone to another”, I think the majesty Paul speaks about in Ephesians can do the same for us.  So, grab your binoculars and share them with somebody this week.  Your relationships and congregation will be blessed

Randy Daugherty

Stephenville, Texas