Holy Experience: What will be magnified?

He comes in from the barn, smelling of sows and sweat and good work, to find me bent over a plate of grated cheese sitting in sunlight.

I’ve got a camera in hand.

It’s true. I feel a bit foolish.

I mean, it’s curls of mozzarella and cheddar piled high in a golden pond of glorious day and I’m changing the settings to macro, increasing the ISO, and pulling in for a close-up frame. And a farming man walks in on me, one who’s fed 650 sows with one strong shouldered arm this morning, flicked on a welder and melded steel together, a barn maintenance project, then revved up the Magnum, filled up the spreader, and hauled several loads of manure to the field.

Sheepishly, I look up, laugh awkwardly.

It’s quite possible that the fine art of an exquisite ring of shredded cheese may be lost on him.

It’s not.

“I like finding you just like this.” He’s chuckling, wrapping an arm around my middle, drawing me close.

“Like this?” I turn into that four-day stubble of his. “You mean, crazy like this, right?” I’m laughing, and he is too. Maybe I’m only slightly embarrassed. Does my laugh hide it?

“No, perfect like this. You being happy in all these little things God gives….” He nods in the direction of the cheese plate … “makes me very happy.”

Being happy in all these little things God gives. That I am.

Plates of cheese and ringlets of girls, creak of mailbox and wrestle of boys. Aroma of chili and fingerswipe of cookie dough, lone leaf on picnic table and flicker of candle long into night. Little things, microscopic really, in the grand scope of things. Many would say trifles. Even sad ignorance, to focus on this.

For aren’t there far more critical things happening in this world needing our attention, prayer, action? True, achingly true.

And yet, in this, I join the prayer of the most blessed of women, about to participate in the most significant event our world has ever known. Mary, with God Himself filling her womb, exalts in quiet ways, “My soul doth magnify the Lord.” So might I; yes, even.

I too may make a place for God to grow within when I amplify all these little things with a thanks-prayer, a gratitude-note, a grace-photo. I too may still to discover little things, embryonic things, and find God Himself. I too may whisper in reverent ways, “My soul doth magnify the Lord.”

For isn’t His signature hidden in all these small things?

Like a child captivated with the wondrous world under a magnifying lens, I’m taken with the marvel of a day of magnifying Almighty God: steaming squash , corduroy shirt, boy hug, soap suds. “I will magnify him with thanksgiving." (Psalm 69:30)

This giving thanks for little things does just that. It increases the spaces in my life that God fills. Instead of magnifying the world’s stress cracks, a day’s grimy smudges, or me, myself, and I, thanksgiving enlarges our experience of God in the moment, He who fills all of space.

It is not that God is little and needs magnifying, but the opposite. It’s our lives that are small, which we’ve distorted, exaggerated, inflated. In thanksgiving, reality is righted, and God is seen for who He is: the Magnificent One.

A day looms. But One looms larger, more beautiful, far closer. I find His name on these daily little things, love notes scattered. I smile, a soul magnifying the Lord with but a word: thanks.

I too sit in sunlight.

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O magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt his name together.

(Psalm 34:3)

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The endless gifts continue ...