"Impressions of Oaxaca"

That's the title of an evocative piece by one of the very best bloggers around, Charlie Lehardy. He's in Oaxaca as part of a five-week business trip that first took him to Panama. After presenting a series of word pictures capturing all that he has been seeing, Charlie reflects:

All over the earth, the rhythms and lyrics change, but the themes of life remain the same: we labor; we eat the fruit of God's earth; we laugh and sing and weep; we relate to each other in commerce and friendship, in love and anger; we sleep; we rise again at the dawn.

And we gaze into the night sky where a billion stars burn and wonder, "What does it all mean?"

We human beings have more in common than we sometimes want to believe is so, in spite of how busily we divide ourselves, hoping in so doing, to propel ourselves higher than others, somehow grasping transcendence through condescension. It won't work!

Maybe those of us who have come to know God through Jesus Christ can learn and can teach others about our common humanity, experiencing the peace of God that truly does pass all human understanding. An ancient stargazer wrote:

O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens.

Out of the mouths of babes and infants you have founded a bulwark because of your foes, to silence the enemy and the avenger.

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established;

what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?

Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor.

You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet,

all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field,

the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! (Psalm 8)

It's a big world and we all seem so small. But each of us is of infinite importance to the Maker of us all. I'm convinced, as I know Charlie is, that the path that leads to discerning the meaning of our seemingly tiny lives leads inevitably to the One Who made the stars...and made us.

Read Charlie's whole post. As usual, it's beautiful writing!

[See here, here, here, here, here, and here.]