For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

—Romans 1:20

A few years ago, I got the most wonderful surprise when my parents showed up at my apartment door to tell me they were going to be moving back to Mississippi after spending several years in California. Soon after, they found themselves a small farm in Pearl River County and made the move.  

I love that little farm. I love pulling onto the gravel drive and seeing the cattle grazing or resting in the shade. I love listening to the clucking of the chickens who get way too impressed with themselves for laying an egg. I love the fact that unless a redneck who has problems with his muffler drives by, you can’t hear any evidence of people. 

One of my favorite things about the farm, however, is the fruit. The farm has a small orchard as well as a small vineyard with blueberry and blackberry bushes in front. One of my favorite things to do is to go berry picking with one of my parents. There’s nothing like working together as a family to bring food to the table, but that’s not the only reason I enjoy heading out to see what’s ripe on the blueberry bush.

I enjoy going to pick blueberries because doing so reminds me of God and His providence. 

Blueberry picking is a season-long job because the berries don’t ripen all at once. Once the first batch of berries is harvested, it will take another couple of days for the next batch to be ready to pick. It’s a cycle of picking and then waiting, picking and then waiting until all the berries have been picked. 

For years I didn’t give this reality much thought other than to think that it seemed silly to have to come back so often to pick all the berries, but one afternoon, when I had gone to pick berries alone, I began to think about why God designed blueberries the way He did. 

If I had my way, any family who needed those blueberries to fill their bellies would end up with more berries than they could eat one day and nothing two days later when they began to go bad. But the way God had naturally designed a blueberry bush to work would allow a family to go back and receive the food they needed for weeks. 

I had a major “What-is-man-that-You-take-thought-of-him” moment over that one. Before Adam had been created, God was thinking about how He would provide for all humanity. He was designing the world to be what we need it to be.

That revelation has had a significant impact on my understanding of Who God is. He is infinitely more thoughtful and caring and loving than I had dreamed possible. And I wouldn’t have ever discovered that facet of Who He is if I hadn’t gone to pick blueberries and thought of God while I worked.

Romans 1 makes it clear that God has woven pieces of Himself into the very fabric and nature of our world. His fingerprints are all over His creation. For those who decide to reject Him, that’s pretty bad news because they won’t have an excuse, but for those of us who have chosen to surrender our lives to Him, that means we have something truly and absolutely amazing to look for, to seek.

That’s the goal of this next series—to intentionally pause for a moment and look for what we can learn about our God from the world around us.

When was the last time you paused to consider Who God is and how He has revealed Himself in the world around us? I have to confess that I’m not sure myself. The last couple of weeks preparing for the school year have been a blur of meetings, professional development, and lesson planning, so being attentive to what God may be trying to teach me about Himself as I go throughout my day hasn’t been something I have excelled at recently.

When life gets busy, it’s easy to relegate God and our relationship with Him to a couple of hours on Sunday and maybe a few minutes in the morning, but when we do that, we risk missing out on discovering another little piece of Who He is.

My hope is that this week we will work to foster an attitude of attentive expectation as we go through each day because I believe that is so much God longs to reveal about Himself if we will only be faithful to look.