We encourage you to sign up for the 40-40-40 Lenten Challenge, a challenge with our partner Southeastern Iowa Synod to participate in Lenten practices, including these daily devotions. Just signing up counts as participation! More info here.

In a recent episode of the podcast Hidden Brain, researcher, and author Dacher Keltner talks about what happens when we experience awe. It turns out that stopping to look at nature creates deep joy and happiness in human beings. Your soul is restored, according to Psalm 23, when God makes you lie down in green pastures and leads you beside still waters. What if this is not a metaphorical lying down, or walking beside a creek, but a literal invitation to be in communion with God outside in nature?

I know it’s still March. Which means that on the day you read this devotion, at least if you live in the Southeastern Iowa Synod, it could be blizzarding or 70 degrees. However, regardless of what the weather is doing on this day, I invite you to experience God’s invitation to restore your soul. Go outside!

Dr. Keltner describes how the emotion of awe has a way of reminding you that your reality is not all of reality. That the troubles of this world are not all that there is, and that we are all caught up in a vision bigger than each of our own realities combined together.

As we hear the words of this Psalm, I invite you to hear them as an invitation to stop, go outside, and see the world differently. God invites you to recognize that despite everything that troubles you, birds still sing, the world still turns, the sun rises and sets, and provides light and warmth all creation needs to survive. This is God’s doing, and in it, God restores your soul.

[1] https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/happiness-2-0-the-reset-button/

Prayer

God, help me to see with ready and willing eyes what it is that you see. Help my sight turn into belief, and turn my belief into action, that following your vision for a world of mercy, peace, and love, I might follow where you lead, through the messiness of death, to the everlasting light of your resurrection dawn. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Journal Prompt

We, humans, are constantly casting visions: how we want our life to look in 3, 5, or 20 years. How our companies can impact the world. How our congregation can best live into its mission. Yet how often do we allow God to shift or change that vision? Do we ever stop to wonder if God has something in store that we haven’t even imagined?

This week I invite you to think about your life, your work, or your congregation. How do you listen for God’s vision? How do you know if your current trajectory aligns with that vision? What has felt extra messy or difficult, and might that be God’s Spirit at work?

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Week Four Devotions by Rev. Erika Uthe, uthe@seiasynod.org