Skylight View

My house was built in the early 90s. This means we moved into a 20 year old house ready for some updating. If you're old enough to remember the 90s, you can close your eyes and see mauve carpet, hunter green tile, wallpaper, gold everywhere (not the trendy kind), and a hook in the ceiling of your kitchen for that fake plant or fern you had to dangle above your fake Ficus tree. The only one from this list I'm not completely sure was in my home is the mauve carpeting. Lucky for us, the carpet was new, but lucky for us, they left the hook, green tile, gold fixtures and wallpaper for us to admire.

 Guess what else I have? A skylight in the vaulted ceiling of my master bath. 
Your mind just said, "Oooo, fancy! Prestigious even!" 

If anyone else has one of these, I'm sure you'd agree it's not fancy. It dates the house while at the same time accumulating dirt, grime, and pollen until the rain attempts to wash it away. It was one of those things I wanted to get rid of immediately. Four years later, it's still there, only now I've grown to love this particular window view with an unexpected admiration. 

Big-trunked, ridiculously tall trees line our backyard. Most were there long before our home ever was. It's a mass of green right now, multi-colored in the Fall, and creepily sparse in the winter. But this old, grimy skylight, placed high on my roof, frames this one particularly tall tree perfectly. This view into it's highest limbs, probably at least 80 feet in the air, has caught my attention. It blooms the most magnificent flowers. 

 My husband assured me "it's just a poplar tree", and I looked it up. Sure enough Google tells me it's a Tulip Poplar, but even still, even though it is not a rare tree, it fascinates me. I've gone out on my second story back deck and looked out into the tree line, and ONLY when I look up, way, way up, do I see this tree's limbs sprawl out and bloom into a beautiful chaotic display. 

I hated the fact these blooms were so far away, out of reach, and almost out of sight, unless I looked through the old, outdated, obscurely-placed window in my roof.

And then a revelation hit me. 

These blooms aren't for me. They're for God. They are the tree's offering to the Lord. 

"Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; bring an offering and come before Him...."

They are the tree's way to worship the Lord who gave it life.

".....Worship the Lord in the splendor of His holiness." 1 Chronicles 16:29

I've often viewed God's beautiful landscapes as His gift to us, his most special creation. But I realize now they're for Him too. For Him, the King of all, to enjoy.... and nature's way of worshipping Him.  

It's made me wonder how easily we can miss God's glory that surrounds us everyday. How easily we forget to bring Him an offering of love and worship, when even the trees don't forget.

I'm not getting rid of that skylight anytime soon. And I pray this Tulip Poplar tree will outlive me, so that I can also enjoy its love offering to God each Spring. 

What love offerings are you missing in your own backyard? 

I promise they're there. We just gotta look, and sometimes just look up.