No Filter
Did you ever see something so breathtaking, that you held up your camera phone, snapped a photo, and it just didn’t do it justice for what you were actually witnessing? That there was no filter that could capture just how beautiful what was before you?
That’s how I felt looking out of the balcony on my first cruise ship experience on our family vacation through Glacier Bay. We had always wanted to go to Alaska, but this day of cruising, literally cruising and doing nothing from a cruise ship except slowly making 360 degree circles to see the glaciers, was unlike anything we’d ever experienced before.
I did nothing but look out with my husband at the untouched landscape in front of us, and kept pinching myself because there was no filter. It was just God’s absolute perfection creation.
I breathed in the cleanest air, felt the cool crisp wind on my cheeks, and took slow blinks to make sure when I opened my eyes again, it was all still really there. The blue sky with white puffy clouds, blue/green reflective waters with pieces of ice floating on top, a mix of brown, green, and gray mountains with white snow capped tops, and birds and fish that moved about the space was orchestrated perfectly. It looked like something straight out of a National Geographic documentary we were used to watching from our living room couch.
Our young kids played inside the room more appreciative of the fun they could create in any space with their imagination, while my husband and I couldn’t believe in our wildest imagination that places this pristine was on the same planet.
I waited for God to tell me something while I stared out at the glaciers, but I heard nothing. Instead, all I saw was how this could bring a tear to even my husband’s eye. God was so real. We could see that only a God that creates the universe could have visualized something this grand.
He didn’t have to say anything.
He didn’t have to add a filter.
He just showed us a very small part of what He made.
He just made himself present, by overwhelming us in the present.
Do you sometimes try to listen for God and hear nothing?
Let’s find peace by piece in just looking at what’s in front of us, with no filter. It may be His creation in the form of nature or a person He has placed in your life and that is how He is speaking to us…reminding us just how grand and how real He really is.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." And there was evening, and there was morning--the first day. And God said, "Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water." So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. God called the expanse "sky." And there was evening, and there was morning--the second day. And God said, "Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear." And it was so. God called the dry ground "land," and the gathered waters he called "seas." And God saw that it was good. -Genesis 1:1-10
