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The Divine and The Dust | Shaylyn Ford Sermon | One Church Columbus

One Church with Greg Ford

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  1. It's great to be here with you this morning.

  2. My name's Shaylin Ford.

  3. I'm Pastor Greg's wife.

  4. And I'm just really excited that I get to have this morning with you.

  5. And hello to everybody that's joining us online as well.

  6. We're excited that we get to be together anywhere in the world.

  7. It's a great feeling.

  8. Before we jump into anything else today, I really want to introduce you to the person who is essentially the reason that we have this message.

  9. Her name is Mo.

  10. She was here last service.

  11. We can actually bring up a picture of her on the screen because I'd love to see her you to see her.

  12. If you don't know Mo, you need to get to know her.

  13. She is just an unbelievable human being.

  14. And I'm actually just met her for the first time a little over a month ago.

  15. And my interaction with her started this like rankling around in my brain and then was really teaching me a lesson.

  16. And I hope that it's something I can pass on to you too.

  17. But actually, when I met Mo for the first time, I met her food before I met her.

  18. So if you don't know her, Mo is quite literally the best cook I've ever met in my life.

  19. And like, listen, I'm one of those people that's like, nobody cooks like my granny, but I'm sorry, like, love you, but Mo's better, right?

  20. Like Mo, that woman can cook.

  21. So the first time that I ever met her, uh, I walk in, we're having a staff lunch.

  22. And uh every once in a while we'll, you know, do a lunch and learn type of thing.

  23. And uh so we'll cater in some food.

  24. So I walk in and the smell, oh my gosh, the smell just hits me when I walk in the door, and I'm like, this smells incredible.

  25. This is gonna be good.

  26. I have celiac, which means I can't eat gluten.

  27. So I was a little bummed.

  28. I'm like, it smells this good, and I'm probably only gonna be able to have like plain chicken.

  29. That's just kind of how it rolls, you know.

  30. So I'm like, dang it, I hope there's one or two things on this menu I can eat.

  31. So I walk in and I the first thing I see is I look at our table places, and we have these like five-star restaurant menus at our places.

  32. Like the DoorDash doesn't do that, you know what I mean?

  33. So I look it over and I'm like, everything on this list sounds so incredible, and every single thing is gluten-free, and a bunch of things are dairy-free, like every kind of dietary restriction that anyone on our staff had had been considered.

  34. It had been so thought out, and it's on this heavy cardstock, it's beautiful.

  35. I'm like, I don't know where we got this food, but we're going here again.

  36. So then I go to get in line to get food, and I'm walking down the line, and I am loading up my plate like I'm eating for Greg and two brothers that are the same size because I'm like, yep, I can have that.

  37. No, keep it coming.

  38. Yep, one more scoop.

  39. There you go.

  40. Okay, I'll take that as well.

  41. I am having everything this woman made, like every single thing.

  42. I will have three meats, thank you.

  43. I will have three vegetables, and it's so good.

  44. I sit down and start eating it, and I'm telling you, it is not an exaggeration when I say that each thing I put in my mouth was better than the last.

  45. So I get to the end of the meal and I have saved room for a dessert because I love God.

  46. And I uh I take this coffee cake.

  47. She made this coffee cake, and for anybody that knows you love it.

  48. And so, for anybody who has ever had gluten-free cake before, you know, it's just kind of not the same.

  49. It's like crumbly, it's not as good, it's thick, it's whatever.

  50. So you're just hoping it's at least somewhere in the neighborhood of decent regular cake.

  51. I take a bite of this, and it is the best care or coffee cake that I've ever had in my life.

  52. And so I'm like, guys, seriously, where did we order in this food?

  53. Because this is so good.

  54. And they're like, Cater, we didn't order this in.

  55. Like, this was Mo.

  56. I'm like, okay, who is Mo?

  57. Introduce me to this lady because this is crazy.

  58. I'm like, wait, did she like bring a team?

  59. No, she cooked it, all of it for our whole staff.

  60. Like, okay, you gotta introduce me to this lady.

  61. So she comes over to the table and she is the sweetest person.

  62. Like, you would love her.

  63. I'm telling you, you gotta meet her.

  64. And she starts telling us her story.

  65. I'm like, where are you from?

  66. How'd you end up here at OneChur?

  67. Because I don't know anything about her.

  68. All I know is my first impression of you is favorable, okay?

  69. So she starts telling us her story.

  70. Her family moved here, they're not from America.

  71. They moved here, moved to New York.

  72. That's where she grew up.

  73. She ended up uh here in Ohio just in the last few years, and she uh before she was even born, so her parents were in the church right away, and her someone came up to her mother and basically prayed over her, prophesied over her, and said, The baby that is in your womb, which was Mo at the time, the baby that is in your womb is going to do incredible things, big things in the kingdom of God.

  74. No pressure to be born into.

  75. So she grows up with this over her head, right?

  76. And in some ways it's a blessing, it's incredible that, you know, you you've been told you have this gift for your life, but in some ways it's kind of a stress because you're like, I don't know how to live up to that, I don't know what that looks like.

  77. And her parents always thought, you know, and the people in her church, like, oh, that means that, you know, she'll be a preacher, she'll be an evangelist, maybe she'll be a worship leader and have thousands of people singing along.

  78. They had these big grand dreams for her.

  79. So they really, with all the best intentions, dedicated their lives to helping her reach this goal that they believed God had set out for her life.

  80. And so she's like, you know, I grew up and I was in church every single time the doors were open and I was, you know, really doing my best to like learn how to preach a good sermon and sing in the choir and like try to figure out where that gift was.

  81. And the reality is I didn't really like to do any of that stuff.

  82. I loved to cook.

  83. I loved it.

  84. Like I would wake up in the middle of the night, she said, I still do.

  85. I'll wake up at two or three in the morning with a recipe idea in my head.

  86. And I literally have to get up and go to the kitchen and start making it to see if it tastes as good as it does in my head.

  87. I'm like, first of all, her family is living my dream.

  88. Who gets to just like you woke up and mom had cooked all night, you know, and you've got this big spread in front of you.

  89. Um, but she's like, I love it so much.

  90. And I felt really guilty and really torn because I felt selfish.

  91. Like, this is the thing that I like to do, but it's not the thing God called me to do.

  92. And I'll let her tell you the whole story at some point.

  93. You you need to get to know her.

  94. But eventually she said she got to the point where she had this really powerful revelation that God had put her on this earth to cook.

  95. That the big, majestic, you know, incredible thing that somebody had prophesied over her was not speaking to thousands of people, it was cooking for people.

  96. She was showing her love through cooking.

  97. She's like, I get to cook.

  98. There are conferences that happen, and I cook for the whole conference.

  99. I get to watch people sit and have community over a meal and enjoy a meal that maybe they couldn't have otherwise.

  100. I get to cook for somebody who's grieving and bring them comfort through a meal.

  101. This is the big deal.

  102. And man, that just like hit me and it sat and it rankled around in my head over the past month because it's like, how often do we look at things and call them mundane when God has called it majestic?

  103. Just because, yes, just because it's something that we see all the time or we do all the time, or it's normal and monotonous and every day to us, doesn't mean that it's not something spectacular and divine and holy in your life.

  104. And so I hope, if you allow me today, I believe that there are loads of things that are majestic in the mundane every single day.

  105. And I hope I can help prove it to you today.

  106. So if it's okay with you, I want to take you on a little bit of a flyover the Bible today, and we're gonna touch down in a few different spots.

  107. And when we do that, this is by no means an exhaustive list of the places that I think God shows the holy in our humanity, but it's going to maybe open your eyes to it.

  108. Now you'll see it everywhere.

  109. You won't be able to unsee it.

  110. It's just gonna hit you over and over and over again.

  111. You'll see it in your life and you'll see it in scripture now, all the times that God intertwines the two.

  112. So let's start all the way at the very, very beginning.

  113. If you're unfamiliar with the Bible, Genesis, very first book, we're going to the first chapter of the first book, okay?

  114. We're really at the beginning.

  115. And this is where God forms man.

  116. Um actually in Genesis 1, there's a word that's used in the original text called ruach, and it means like the very breath of God, like he is breathing his divine image into us.

  117. Um, if you go to Genesis 2, 7, it says, Then the Lord God formed, that is, created the body of man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being, an individual complete in body and spirit.

  118. Um by the way, if you are looking at your version of the Bible, maybe you're using the Bible app or your physical copy, and it's a little bit different than what you see, uh, the version that I used is the Amplified Bible.

  119. Basically, that just has some extra things in parentheses that kind of expound on the scripture and what it means a little bit, so it gives you a little bit of extra clarity.

  120. Um, mine doesn't say it exactly like that.

  121. It's saying the same thing, it's just trying to explain it to you.

  122. Um, those tools that Greg has given us over the past year or so to be able to compare and contrast different versions and pull more from each text, really, really valuable.

  123. So definitely look into that.

  124. But I I think this is a really important one for us to start because it lays the framework for it, right?

  125. The whole rest of the Bible, he's so intentional about the first thing he ever tells about us is not just that we were made, but that we were made fully inhabited by his spirit.

  126. There is divinity in our dust.

  127. So we're created from the dust, and then it's it's not just giving air.

  128. I think it's easy to like overlook in that scripture and just think it's air in his lungs.

  129. No, it's divine image in his lungs, it's in you, right?

  130. Yes.

  131. So from the very beginning, he is telling you that you are wholly human and holy in his image.

  132. You have holiness baked into you, right?

  133. So don't ignore that.

  134. Don't, I think often we try to separate the two.

  135. We feel like our humanity is not enough and that God's holiness is something over here, and we're striving to be as separated from the two, and he's going, No, I want you to get from the very first thing that I tell you about yourself, the Imago Dei, that word that means in the very image of God.

  136. That is you, and your humanity, your body, and your spirit are the whole thing.

  137. Okay?

  138. So we've got that as our framework.

  139. Let's fly a little bit further.

  140. We're only gonna go one book further, and let's go to Exodus.

  141. So in chapter Exodus 16, uh, I'm I'm not gonna read the whole thing to you, but essentially the story is when the people of Israel have been rescued and by God and been led out of Egypt by Moses, and so now they are starting to wander in the desert, and they're gonna end up being there for 40 years, which is a really long time to be in a desert.

  142. And so as they are coming out of there, obviously a desert is not gonna have a lot to eat.

  143. It's not going to have, you know, a lot of the provisions that you need.

  144. And so they're coming to Moses and they're complaining.

  145. That's the setup of this story.

  146. And so they're coming to Moses and they're going, we don't know what to eat.

  147. Like there's there's almost nothing here.

  148. And so God creates a miracle for them where every single morning when they wake up, there is a bread, a bread-like substance called manna, that comes down from heaven and is just laying on the ground outside their tent.

  149. You don't have to do anything except for walk outside and pick it up, and you've got a cake that they describe as tasting like, you know, a olive oil cake.

  150. I'm good with that.

  151. And so they they walk out and they have this every day.

  152. By the way, if that's ringing a little bell in your head, if you think about the prayer when we say, give us this day hour.

  153. Okay, there you go.

  154. That's what that is coming from.

  155. It's referencing the people of Israel back to this time in their history where every single day God is giving them their daily bread.

  156. It is a completely miraculous event.

  157. This is like incomprehensible to think about complete provision from heaven dropping in your lap every single time.

  158. And so you would think that you would just be in awe of it.

  159. If you're the people of Israel, you're like, I'm in awe of this all the time.

  160. But somehow, the monotony of it, it's 40 years of eating the same thing every day, you stop losing or you start losing sight of the fact that this is also a miracle.

  161. All right, let's let's prove this point another way.

  162. Is there anybody in here that's been married 40 years or more?

  163. Raise your hand.

  164. Okay.

  165. Oh, we got a lot in this service.

  166. I love it.

  167. Okay, yeah, let's flap them up because it's a big deal.

  168. All right, this couple right here, what are your names?

  169. Can you shout them out for me?

  170. All right, Ed and Patty.

  171. We'll give it up for Ed and Patty.

  172. So we we have some questions for you.

  173. So, Ed and Patty, how long have you been married?

  174. 51! I think I think they win for the day, actually, out of all three services.

  175. So we already all spontaneously clapped because we know being together 51 years is a miracle and an accomplishment of and of itself, right?

  176. But let's stop and take.

  177. I love the commentary happening back here.

  178. So, but let's stop and think for a second, actually, about how miraculous it is that the two of them are together.

  179. Because it's not just that they stayed together 51 years.

  180. We got to back it up a little bit.

  181. So the chances that she exists as she is from her two parents, scientifically, okay, that she exists from her two parents and not some other combination that led to a sibling are one in 400 quadrillion.

  182. That's just her.

  183. Now you've got him in the mix, so you've doubled it.

  184. But then you have to take it back even a little bit further because it's not just that you two happen to exist, you exist at the same time to be able to find each other, right?

  185. So he's not born in 1776, right?

  186. He's here now.

  187. And so that is such an extreme scientific anomaly, statistically almost impossible.

  188. There are 2.6 million zeros behind it.

  189. I can't even tell you that number.

  190. So these two people with those kind of odds end up here at the same time.

  191. And then where did you grow up?

  192. And where did you grow up?

  193. So they had to find each other.

  194. They're both from Ohio, but they could have been anywhere on the planet with billions of people at the same time.

  195. They still had to end up in the same place at the same time.

  196. Then they had to both like each other enough to go, let's build a life together.

  197. And then they had to build that life together and stay alive this long to get to 51.

  198. You see what I'm saying?

  199. It's an utter miracle beyond what we can actually comprehend that these two are here today together, married 51 years.

  200. And yet, are there ever days that are just mundane?

  201. You're allowed to answer honestly.

  202. Not, does let me put it this way does every single day do you just bask in the miracle that you're both here at the same time?

  203. Exactly.

  204. No matter how much you appreciate your spouse, you're never going to like sit and just be in that level of awe all the time.

  205. Sometimes, just because something isn't novel anymore, we start to devalue it a little bit.

  206. We start to maybe not see it for the absolutely miraculous, majestic, incredible thing that it is.

  207. And it's on us to keep showing up and keep calibrating ourselves to the fact that God has put divine things in our everyday lives.

  208. So where I would encourage you this week, if you take nothing else away, to take a second and just go, what is the manna in my life that has maybe become monotony?

  209. And I'm not fully appreciating it for the absolutely unbelievable gift that it is that God has put up my life anymore.

  210. All right, let's keep moving forward.

  211. So we have, we've got our understanding and genesis of who we are.

  212. We've got the understanding that sometimes we stop seeing life for what it is because it's just there all the time and it's just Tuesday.

  213. So now we're gonna move on, we're gonna jump into the New Testament and we're gonna look at Mary.

  214. We're gonna look at Mary, the mother of Jesus.

  215. Um, I've got two scriptures for you that are both in Luke 2.

  216. The first one is, but Mary treasured all these things, giving careful thought to them and pondering them in her heart.

  217. That's Luke 2.19.

  218. And then Luke 2.51 is again, it's very similar, and his mother treasured all these things in her heart.

  219. What are they talking about?

  220. What are these two scripture scriptures in reference to?

  221. I love the fact that these two are both about very deeply human moments in Mary's life that are also deeply holy.

  222. And they are maybe not even entirely positive, but she recognizes that they're sacred.

  223. So let the first one we'll go one by one.

  224. The first one is from when Jesus was born, and the second one is from when he was about 12 years old, they were going on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and uh, and she actually loses Jesus in a crowd, which every mother who's ever lost their kid in Target for five minutes knows.

  225. It's really sacred, feels really great.

  226. So we have these two verses about really profoundly human moments in her life that may not have really felt that holy at the time, right?

  227. Um, it's interesting because these are not quotes from Mary.

  228. This is just talking about things that she's thinking about.

  229. You know, it tells us she treasured these things in her heart.

  230. Well, how would we know that?

  231. Uh maybe she told somebody.

  232. So it's kind of interesting to think about because this isn't the book of Mary, it's the book of Luke.

  233. So there's a good chance she sat down and told Luke about these memories that she had and that they were precious to her.

  234. And I it's interesting to sit and think about her, whether it was to Luke or he heard it from somewhere else, someone else, but to think about her describing these events because you think about the time she was born or that Jesus was born when she was giving birth to him and how that must have felt to her.

  235. And I think sometimes we just really think about it in terms of the holy moment of it.

  236. But it was deeply human.

  237. Like, think about we there are trillions of dollars worth of art on this planet of Mary, and she's depicted with you know the halo around her head, the perfect glow, the flowing robes without a wrinkle, Jesus isn't crying, everything's perfect.

  238. But that's not reality, you know.

  239. It wasn't all peaceful, it wasn't all easy, it wasn't all just golden moments.

  240. You're talking about a teenage girl having a baby.

  241. We're talking about a girl that has been riding a donkey for weeks to go to a faraway land, a place where none of her family is.

  242. Before they leave town to go on this journey, she and Joseph are still kind of dealing with this hovering specter of people's rumors about how Jesus actually is came to be.

  243. How is she pregnant yet?

  244. And what that would do to you.

  245. No one believes you.

  246. And then you you think about you're finally to that point where you're about to have your first baby.

  247. And if if you're someone in this room who's done that, you know when you're getting ready to have a baby for the first time how overwhelming that is.

  248. And you would think the the place she has to do this is a barn.

  249. It's it's not some perfectly curated, you know, visual on a stage stable, it's a real working barn.

  250. And then you'll the only person you have with you is Joseph.

  251. And I mean, no offense, I'm sure Joseph was wonderful, but this was not the day and age when husbands were in the delivery room.

  252. He wouldn't have had a clue what to do, you know.

  253. This was a time when when you gave birth, you had a midwife there, you had your mother.

  254. She didn't have her own mother with her.

  255. She didn't have the community of women with decades of having children and that experience in the room to help walk her through what she was about to do.

  256. And then now I'm responsible for raising the son of God now that he's here.

  257. And I have to, my first act as a mother is to have to keep him alive from Herod, who is the most powerful peep person in their time, who wants to kill him.

  258. So we're gonna have to go on the run the minute I'm even capable of walking again after having this baby.

  259. You have people showing up, strangers at the bar.

  260. You see what I'm saying?

  261. Like it was so deeply human.

  262. This wasn't something that was just this beautiful, perfectly curated what we think of holy, what we expect God's miracles to look like, what we expect God showing up in our Circumstance to look like.

  263. It's not always glorious, but it really is holy, even when it's deeply, deeply human.

  264. The second time that that happens, where we have the scripture that it says Mary treasured these things in her heart and she pondered them and wondered what it meant, and um is when Jesus was 12, and as I said, they they lost him in a crowd, you know, and and they're on their way home, and she finally realizes wait, he's not out here playing with friends.

  265. They have to go all the way back to Jerusalem.

  266. It takes a very long time to find him.

  267. And they finally find him at the temple.

  268. But can you imagine being a first-time mom and you, you know, you don't know what you're doing, you're terrified.

  269. This is your oldest kid, you've lost them, like really lost them.

  270. You can't grab your cell phone and call a friend, you know, and go, hey, is is he at Johnny's house?

  271. Like you're going, I lost the son of God, the literal son of God.

  272. Like, this was my one job.

  273. You know, it it's those moments that are not necessarily always so beautiful, but they are so deeply meaningful and they teach us something really important.

  274. And it's on us to not devalue them just because other people wouldn't see the value.

  275. Like we would think that the things that she would treasure would be the miracles that Jesus did.

  276. I remember the first time he did a miracle.

  277. That's not ever mentioned there.

  278. It's the things that were really deeply human.

  279. And it made me think a little bit about how much there are things that I need to re-examine and treasure and take seriously.

  280. And actually, I it brought me back to this box here.

  281. Um, this is a jewelry box that was given to me by my mother, and it was her mother's who died in a car accident when my mom was 13.

  282. She was hit by a drunk driver, and she lost her mother and her grandmother in one fell swoop.

  283. And so I never got to meet any either of them.

  284. And so this box is already deeply meaningful to me.

  285. It's it's just an old falling apart box to most people, but I treasure this.

  286. I don't let anything happen to this box.

  287. And then you start going through the things in it, and it looks like not much.

  288. It's it's scraps of fabric, it's little pieces of paper, it's costume jewelry, it's you know, it's it's little plastic beaded bracelets.

  289. If I walked into a pawn shop, you know, with this, like I might get a couple bucks for it.

  290. But this was my great-grandmother's, you know, and and this was something that these were earrings that my grandmother used to wear when she was a roller rink girl, and she would skate around and she could put a match in her teeth and light it on the floor while she was skating.

  291. So that's really meaningful to me.

  292. I have a locket in here that my daughter gave me when she was two with a little paper picture of us inside, and I've got something very deeply human.

  293. I have her first tooth, and I know some people are grossed out by that, but sorry, I'm a keep your first tooth person.

  294. Um there's there's a garter in here that has been passed down as the something borrowed and something blue for generations, and you know, up here there are a couple pieces of paper, and for anybody else, this isn't even worth the paper it's printed on.

  295. But to me, this is a letter from my grandfather in his handwriting that nobody else can read, but I love it.

  296. And when he passed away, someone found a letter that I had written to him in my little kid handwriting in my precious little nine-year-old stationery, and they gave it back to me, a letter that I wrote him.

  297. And I said, Dear grandpa, I love you a lot.

  298. I wish you would move to Finlay, that's where I lived.

  299. Then I could visit you more.

  300. And my dad worked on facts with me, and my math is much better.

  301. Not great.

  302. Notice I did not say great, it's still not great.

  303. I will be visiting you soon.

  304. I split the two dollars you gave me and my brother between us, and I used mine to help my mom at the laundromat.

  305. P.S.

  306. But she paid me back.

  307. Love Shaylin.

  308. I love you in big letters.

  309. And this to anybody else is not worth anything more than the paper it's printed on.

  310. But these to me, I wouldn't sell you these for all the money in the world.

  311. Because this might be really mundane, basic, everyday stuff that other people would look past, but it's the people God put in my life, it's the precious memories I've had the privilege of making, it's people I've loved and lost, and it's helped me when I look back at things like this to keep everything in its proper context, to be able to go, there is absolutely beautiful, holy things in our basic everyday humanity, and I don't want to lose that.

  312. I think everybody has something like that in them where like it brings you back to center, it helps you, it helps you be more in touch with who God is and know the mind of God, and um, for me, that's nature, that's my biggest thing.

  313. Like, I just I could just go sit outside and look at a leaf, quite frankly, and be in awe.

  314. Like, I just love it and I love learning more facts about it.

  315. And every time I do it, I feel like when Mo is cooking at 3 a.m., like I feel alive, you know, and I feel connected.

  316. And I feel like everybody has that.

  317. And I would love for you to take some time and explore, like, where did I maybe lose sight of it, or I undervalued it, or I didn't think it was God's call in my life, or that it was something God gave me to enrich my life.

  318. I just called it human and he's calling it holy.

  319. You know, for me, it's that like I love learning things in nature and the revelations I have with God about it and how worshipful it feels, and I love sharing it with my family and my friends.

  320. For Greggitt's study, you know, when I get like six sermons a week, you guys only get one because, you know, he loves it so much.

  321. And not only is it something that he gets to pass on to other people, but it's changing him, it's enriching him, it's helping him see things.

  322. I I have a friend that he's like, you know, I love like I just come alive when I can put a spreadsheet in order.

  323. And I'm like, great.

  324. I don't feel closer to heaven when that happens.

  325. I feel closer to the opposite of heaven because grandpa knows, you know, mutt dollars and and uh and numbers are not my thing, but like it's I'm glad that is it for you, and you have that thing, and it's easy to go, well, that's just my job.

  326. Well, that's just me being a parent to my kids.

  327. Well, that's just me, but it's not.

  328. Just because it's ordinary to you or it's become mundane to you, doesn't mean it's not majestic.

  329. It is.

  330. You know, I saw there's a photo here I brought for you guys today, since nature is just so my thing, and I'm I'm sorry if you don't like bats.

  331. I should have given you a warning.

  332. I forgot every service to be like, look away if you hate bats.

  333. Um, but this image, especially on Mother's Day, it's like, you know, you're we're all sitting here scrolling our phones, and this stopped me in my tracks because I'm like, I don't know if you can see she's got a baby attached to her while she's flying, while she's gathering food, she's got fruit in her mouth.

  334. Like that is unreal to me.

  335. I look at that and I have revelations about God and motherhood.

  336. I am in awe of God's handiwork and like the absolute engineering marvel that she is to be able to do these things.

  337. And it puts me in a state of worship.

  338. But then even beyond that, it takes me a step further where I think about that, and I'm like, that's just Tuesday for her.

  339. She doesn't think that's anything spectacular.

  340. That's just what she does all day, every day.

  341. And things like that are happening all day, every day, all around the world, all the time.

  342. Little miracles everywhere, all the time.

  343. It's spectacular.

  344. And I think about the things that are happening in the depths of the ocean that I don't know about, and things that are happening in galaxies that haven't even been discovered yet.

  345. And then that brings me back to center, and I have peace because I know if the creator of that and that and that and all of this can keep all of that spinning in perfect order, why am I worried about my life?

  346. Find the thing, find the thing in your life that is absolutely divine, but it's in the dust or it's it's in the average thing in your life, and you go, oh my gosh, it was right in front of me the whole time.

  347. There's actually, if we take a little farther in scripture, past Mary, there's a scripture where Jesus is saying, the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

  348. And I think we misread it a lot because we think he means like it's coming soon, it's almost here, and he's going, no, like it's this close.

  349. It's as far away as your own hand.

  350. That is what he wants us to see.

  351. The kingdom of heaven is not somewhere far away.

  352. It's in us, it's around us, it's in the community that you have, it's in the things that you get up and do every day.

  353. It is absolutely miraculous that you're here.

  354. And it's absolutely miraculous that we're all here and we're all so different, and we all bring something unique to the table.

  355. And so I just I stand in awe in these moments and I go, God, please help me not lose sight of where the kingdom of heaven is this close, and I'm looking right past it.

  356. Help me see where the kingdom of heaven is present in my own life, and I've maybe missed it, or I've just started seeing it as monotony.

  357. I look at that bat and I go, that helps me see my life in perspective, and it helps me see the beauty that's right in front of me.

  358. So that's my encouragement for you today.

  359. I want to leave you with two things to kind of chew on.

  360. This is, you know, Mo didn't know she was preaching to me that day, but she really was.

  361. And she left me with these two questions rattling in my brain.

  362. And so the the first one would be what are you currently viewing as mundane in your life that is actually majestic?

  363. And look inside yourself and see what holy thing are you missing?

  364. Because it just feels so human.

  365. It just feels like, I mean, that's just me, that's just what I do.

  366. And you miss the fact that it is the absolute essence of God, his divine, in your dust.

  367. I'd like to ask the prayer team to come forward at this point.

  368. And if you want somebody to pray with you about some of those things, we're here for you.

  369. But no matter what, I would just encourage you to take that home with you this week because there is no greater gift than the one that He's already placed right inside of you from the moment you drew your first breath.

  370. Okay, let me pray over you today.

  371. God, thank you so much for the incredible opportunity to be alive.

  372. The opportunity that out of one in 400 quadrillion, each person in this room is here.

  373. Thank you for the people you've placed around us.

  374. Thank you for the everyday manna that you put in our lives, that you give us what we need every day when we wake up and you keep for providing it and you keep showing up and you never leave and you never forsake us.

  375. God, help us to see the absolutely extraordinary, beautiful things that just look like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.

  376. Help us to appreciate what you've placed in our lives and the absolute miracle that it is to have your majesty inhabiting our mundane.

  377. Help us to see it for so much more for everything that it is.

  378. In Jesus' name.

  379. Amen.

  380. Guys, thank you all so much.

  381. Happy Mother's Day.

  382. Hope you all have a great, great afternoon, great week.