Taking Time to Smell the Roses

For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities-his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.
--Romans 1:20

Yesterday on the way home from school my radio was, as it often is, on US97. It's our local country music station. Yes, I admit it. If there were a support group for country music fans, I would have to join it. I have my favorite singers...Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, Lonestar, Sarah Evans, Carrie Underwood, Taylor Swift, John Michael Montgomery and like every good country music fan...Rascal Flatts. But, I didn't always like Country Music.

Growing up, I couldn't stand it! Country music was for old people. I would just cringe when my mom and step dad would turn off Journey, Bon Jovi, and Styx to put in Hank Williams, Loretta Lynn or Willie Nelson.

But it all changed when my Daddy took me to the Mesquite Rodeo in 1985 to see....George Strait. And it was George that opened up my heart and allowed God to speak into it yesterday.

One of his newest songs is called "I saw God today". He talks of leaving the hospital after his baby girl is born and for the first time really seeing God's creation all around him. How many of us are like this song? I'm paraphrasing from the chorus: We've been to church, we've read our bibles, we KNOW He's there...but we don't look for him. His fingerprints are everywhere around us...if we would just slow down long enough to see them....we would see God today.

As the last notes of that song faded away I began to notice the things around me. It was almost as if I were seeing them for the first time. Big fluffy white clouds in a brilliant blue sky, wildflowers of every color growing beside the highway, a small waterfall bouncing off the rocks down the side of a hill and into the creek below, a group of toddlers on the playground of the daycare center, two dogs chasing each other around their front yard....God's creations.

We get so busy with our lives that as the old saying goes we forget to stop and smell the roses....which are blooming on my neighbors porch right now. As you go through your day, take a look around you. See what wondrous creations you discover...perhaps for the very first time.