The World is Crowded

   Last week I wrote about Sydney's graduation from her school, Woodlawn. I am always struck whenever I visit up there in North Carolina, how much the parents and students at that K-12 school enjoy being there. There is just something about the atmosphere there that draws people in.

   I picked up a book, actually a compilation of letters from students to Dwayne and Karen on the 10th anniversary of the school they had started, and was struck by the many references to the outdoors as a reason the kids enjoyed their learning experiences. These lower school students loved the fact that they could get out in nature and do things to learn. They play outside, they eat outside, the garden outside and they just get out of the classroom into the larger world where things are going on.

   Now this school is not "a Christian school" in its charter and its teachings, but God is available to these kids on a daily basis. I may call it "accidental encounters", but in the long run, it is anything but.

   There is a quote from C.S. Lewis that I ran across the other day:

   "We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him."

   I always try to take the time to look around the school when I am there. I just like to see what the kids are doing and how they are interacting with each other and with their learning experiences. I saw some students going through the garden area, mind you school was out for the summer, and they were pointing out to each other various things that they had done and the plants that they were watching to see how they developed. That garden was "crowded" with God's handiwork.

   In another area, the 5th graders had made projects out of bottle caps and planted them in a portion of the field that adjoined the classroom area. I was drawn to the color.

   But as I looked closely, I saw this writing on the back of one of the plastic creations:

   Sounds like a Bible verse to me. It may have been featured as a lesson on respecting others, but was it not God "crowding" into that space?

   The verse that I read this morning was from Matthew 6:

“Your eyes are windows into your body. If you open your eyes wide in wonder and belief, your body fills up with light. If you live squinty-eyed in greed and distrust, your body is a dank cellar. If you pull the blinds on your windows, what a dark life you will have!"

   All I have to do is open my eyes and He is everywhere.

   How much I pray that all the students at that school and people everywhere will open up their eyes to the things that God has put all around us.

   The world is crowded.