The View

Eisenach, Germany

You needed a break from all this Luther stuff and this picture has nothing to do with Luther except that it was taken in the Lutherhaus in Eisenach.

When was the last time you stared out the window. I've been privileged at gazing out some pretty amazing windows. I've looked at the Pacific Ocean out of a window in the lightkeeper's house at Heceta Beach, Oregon. I've looked out the window of a home on the west hills of Portland to the amazing view of the city below. I've looked out of a resort window to gaze at the beauty of the Alps in Germany.

I've also seen some pretty ugly things out of windows. As a small child I looked through our home windows and saw a knife fight across the street. I saw a nasty collision of two cars through the windshield of my Impala. I watched my cat kill a mouse (okay maybe that wasn't so bad).

If we're afraid of the ugly we can pull the curtains and hide in our homes, but that is not what God did. Through Jesus, God has seen both the beauty of his created world and experienced the ugly. God didn't close the curtains.

"God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him." 1 John 4:9 New Living Translation

This gift of eternal life comes only through the brutality of the cross and the glory of the resurrection. As we gaze through our windows may we see in the good and the bad the cross and the empty tomb knowing that God has not closed the curtain on us.

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(Click on picture to enlarge.)

Text and Photographs ©Copyright 2013 Douglas P. Brauner.  ARR.