Getting a Sense of How You Sense

What kind of sensing do you do? This is a strange but important question.

This is a very important question since you experience the external world, God's world, through your senses. How do you see? How do you taste? How do you smell? How do you touch? How do you hear? How well do you sense?

If you ask someone how well they do any of these things, answers would likely be fine, good, well, not so good, or could be better. In fact, these would emerge automatically, without even a second of consideration.

But there are important distinctions concerning the quality of our sensations and how we perceive them.

Seeking verses looking. Feeling as opposed to touching. Savoring as opposed to tasting. Listening as opposed to hearing. Smelling deeply as opposed to just smelling?

Perhaps there are more ways we experience, we sense, the external world.

We take these abilities for granted, only to really pay attention to them when they become diminished or when we lose them completely.

Try this experiment.

Set aside three hours of a typical day and pay attention to each of these sensations. I mean really pay attention to them. Notice how they sometimes complement each other.

The cliché, “Take time to smell the roses,” invites us to carve out of our busy lives time to appreciate what we might usually admire from distance, roses metaphorically representing what’s really going on around us.

When we do this, we can better appreciate the world around us, the world God created and sustains with all its wonderful nuances and blessings.

In God's Words

"Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, indeed everything that is in the heavens and the earth; Yours is the dominion, O Lord, and You exalt Yourself as head over all." (1 Chronicles 29:11)

"He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end." (Ecclesiastes 3:11)

"And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” (Isaiah 6:3)

In the Words of Others

"God dwells in His creation and is everywhere indivisibly present in all His works. He is transcendent above all His works even while He is immanent within them." A. W. Tozer

"If created things are seen and handled as gifts of God and as mirrors of His glory, they need not be occasions of idolatry - if our delight in them is always also a delight in their Maker." John Piper

In Your Words

Do you take time to "smell the roses," even on your busiest day? If no, consider setting aside time each day to open yourself to all the sensations around you. Plan to appreciate each one as a wonder from God.

Close your eyes and meditate on the scriptures listed above, letting your imagination paint pictures of all God makes beautiful in its own time. Consider what that means in relationship to the seasons and the way nature works.