Church with Monet
We had our first official Calvary Chapel Normandy service yesterday and it was so beautiful outside, (extremely, devastatingly hot,) that we decided to have it at the park near Monet's gardens in Giverny. It's only a ten minute drive from our village, so we packed a picnic, stuffed all six of us in the car, and headed out.
Giverny is a hyper-seasonal town, in that, it lies dormant, almost completely dead, during the sharp freeze of winter, but explodes with wild, exotic colors, and tourists, during the spring and summer months. A lot of places we've seen in France can be accused of being slightly jaded towards tourists during the peak travel times. But to Giverny, they are part of the experience. Maybe it's because they are artists. Or gardeners. Or artist gardeners who like to bike and walk. In any sense, Giverny, as a town, is one of the places that benefits from the crowds.
Walking down the gallery-lined road, there is so much life and beauty competing for attention, it's a challenge to determine what to take in. Do you stare like a star struck teenager at the exquisite Japanese women who walk by, unaffected by the suffocating humidity with their perfect parasols? Or do you get near to the ground, in childlike wonder, watching the bees pollinate the violet fireworks that spill haphazardly onto the sidewalk from the bordering flower beds? It's an overwhelming buzz of appreciation for life and beauty and the Creator of all things under heaven and earth.
So that's where we went. We planted our blankets, guitar, bibles and lunch, at the park, and had church.
Jeff taught through the introduction of Titus and I lead worship under an old tree, that became the stadium seating for the birds that dropped down every now and again to gather the crumbs from our baguettes. Singing there, to the One who made everything around us, I remembered something that has become a theme lately.
God is kind.
God is kind.
Sometimes I have to say it a couple times to have it really sink in.
Bad things don't happen to us because He's mean, or tricky, or cruel. Bad things happen to us because the world is a spinning wheel of entropy destined to inevitably fail. And sometimes the wheel cycles off some shattered pieces that hit us directly in the gut.
Our hope is that He doesn't waste the bad. In fact He allows it for a perfect purpose, despite the appearance or comfort level of the trial. There's hope that the winter will melt, and the intricate design of creation will resurrect, and not just whimper along in a gray sallow survival mode...No. There will be an explosion of beauty and power, like poppies in a wheat field, or hollyhock on the side of the walls.
As a dear friend told me once, this life is made of seasons. The winter doesn't last forever, but neither does the spring.
Giverny is a hyper-seasonal town, in that, it lies dormant, almost completely dead, during the sharp freeze of winter, but explodes with wild, exotic colors, and tourists, during the spring and summer months. A lot of places we've seen in France can be accused of being slightly jaded towards tourists during the peak travel times. But to Giverny, they are part of the experience. Maybe it's because they are artists. Or gardeners. Or artist gardeners who like to bike and walk. In any sense, Giverny, as a town, is one of the places that benefits from the crowds.
Walking down the gallery-lined road, there is so much life and beauty competing for attention, it's a challenge to determine what to take in. Do you stare like a star struck teenager at the exquisite Japanese women who walk by, unaffected by the suffocating humidity with their perfect parasols? Or do you get near to the ground, in childlike wonder, watching the bees pollinate the violet fireworks that spill haphazardly onto the sidewalk from the bordering flower beds? It's an overwhelming buzz of appreciation for life and beauty and the Creator of all things under heaven and earth.
So that's where we went. We planted our blankets, guitar, bibles and lunch, at the park, and had church.
Jeff taught through the introduction of Titus and I lead worship under an old tree, that became the stadium seating for the birds that dropped down every now and again to gather the crumbs from our baguettes. Singing there, to the One who made everything around us, I remembered something that has become a theme lately.
God is kind.
God is kind.
Sometimes I have to say it a couple times to have it really sink in.
Bad things don't happen to us because He's mean, or tricky, or cruel. Bad things happen to us because the world is a spinning wheel of entropy destined to inevitably fail. And sometimes the wheel cycles off some shattered pieces that hit us directly in the gut.
Our hope is that He doesn't waste the bad. In fact He allows it for a perfect purpose, despite the appearance or comfort level of the trial. There's hope that the winter will melt, and the intricate design of creation will resurrect, and not just whimper along in a gray sallow survival mode...No. There will be an explosion of beauty and power, like poppies in a wheat field, or hollyhock on the side of the walls.
As a dear friend told me once, this life is made of seasons. The winter doesn't last forever, but neither does the spring.
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