He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. Psalm 23:3 (NKJV)

Part One – Take Your Shoes Off

I’ve just discovered the “The Passion Translation” of the Bible. You can buy it book by book on Amazon. Here’s Psalm 23:3 from it:

“That’s where he restores and revives my life. He opens before me pathways to God’s pleasure, and leads me along in his footsteps of righteousness so that I can bring honor to his name.”

God restores and revives us, which denotes that we need restoring and reviving. It's not a weakness, but part of the human condition. I had 3.5 hours sleep last night and I needed coffee to restore and revive me this morning (mainly just revive… restoration still needed haha!!). Nothing bad happened, I just worked into the night. And since I didn’t get enough sleep, I needed reviving. We give, we work, we create, we do, we expend energy. And the spending of our energy doesn’t come without cost. It sounds obvious, but we don’t often take the time to replenish the physical, emotional and spiritual stores that we spend so easily during the natural course of our lives.

I believe God has designed the natural world to help rejuvenate us – he uses it as part of the process. David references lush green pastures, quiet and calm waters and straight pathways at the beginning of this Psalm, using them as a metaphor of how God impacts his spirit. But God also uses creation to infiltrate us with his presence. The sun, oxygen, ocean, walks, swimming, running, climbing, mountain tops, valleys, fields, rivers, grass, dirt… all these things in nature are proven to be good for our health, and amazing for our spirits.

A lot of us, myself included, go and close ourselves away and pray and pray and pray in a dark, cold, small room and then wait for God to answer our prayers and send us his peace. It's always good to pray, we constantly pray by opening up our lives to God. But sometimes part of the prayer is getting out into wide open spaces; filling our lungs with fresh cold mountain air or putting our feet into the ocean and squishing sand between our toes. Allowing God to minister to our hearts through his masterpiece of creation. Sometimes, we should take our prayers, worries, thankyou’s and requests outside and let God wrap our hearts up with it. After all, he is in all things.

“The Lord is my Fierce Protector and my Pastor. I always have more than enough. He offers a resting place for me in his luxurious love. His tracks take me to an oasis of peace, the quiet brook of bliss.” Ps 23:1-2 (PT)

If you need restoring, (and unless you’ve just come back from a month long exotic holiday you probably do need some restoring and reviving) try a change of scenery. When you drive past that lookout spot at the top of the lake on the way home from work, pull over, take 5 minutes, behold the glory of God in his creation. Or if you’re at the park with the kids take your shoes off and press your naked feet into the earth, God breathed into it to create humanity. Or get up early (this might take some practice… haha), go for a walk and watch the sunrise in all its splendour and warmth, kissing the world with kindness…

He offers you a resting place, tracks of peace and brooks of bliss through it all.

Go to Part Two – Valley Places

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