The sweet taste of fresh picked blackberries from a roadside bramble that couldn't be passed up. The bone-warming feel of the summer sun. The smell of the Puget Sound air as the breeze came off the water as I rode by on my bike. The early morning roar of a neighbor mowing their lawn and the crows screeching outside my bedroom window. The full-scale sight of the evening sunset as the sky darkened in tandem with watercolor streaks.
These are some of my memories as a kid - where summer was felt, tasted, seen, heard and touched - and those are memories run deep. These days, I find that I need to get out of my head more often than not, but when I do take the time to slow down and sense the world around me, I'm more open to what God is doing in me, in my life and family. I can literally hear God better.
Honestly, the senses can be messy, though. They are sometimes bigger and more expansive than we can take in. This messy splendor of creation reminds us that God is a constant creator and is inviting us to experience creation through our senses and pointing us to something larger - to know and trust the God of Universe. Not neatly, but certainly more fully.
When we help kids experience God’s glory with their five senses, faith can become a daily adventure of experiencing the living God in real time. With real bodies. Sometimes, with real messes. Summer can be an easy time to introduce or reintroduce kids to sensing God and engaging with him through their senses and moving them to thankfulness or even questions. It's a time when children can make a mess outside - creating, seeing, exploring, hearing, tasting, feeling - and you can hose the whole mess down before bedtime.
This poem is in a children's book we have at home. Reading it to my kids, I hoped they'd understand that God is accessible to them in ways they can understand and experience. And it seems that summer is the season where God is communicating like no other time - flinging wide his beauty to say, "I AM your God who creates and loves. Always. Trust me."
I Wanted to Know All About God
by Virginia L. Kroll
I wanted to know all about God,
so I went out looking for him in signs of his creation.
I wondered what God does in the mornings.
Then I smelled the dew on the grass at dawn.
I wondered where God is at nighttime,
and I felt safe and warm in my bed.
I wondered if God is gentle,
and a butterfly floated on the air in front of me.
I wondered if God is strong, and the ocean roared in my ears.
I wanted to know if God likes music.
Then I heard a pond on a summer night.
I wondered what God's love feels like,
and Grandma put her arms around me and gave me a big hug.
Now when I go out looking for God,
I know exactly where to find him.
Psalm 34:8 (NIV)
Taste and see that the Lord is good;
blessed is the one who takes refuge in him.