Celebrating God’s Glory in His Creation Blog post #60

**Readers who have followed this blog for awhile know that I find the yearly “one word resolution” to be a life giving rhythm, because it inspires us to set our intentions on how we want to grow each year. (Check out blog posts #44 and #2 for previous posts.)**

When I first read the devotional from Dorina Lazo Gilmore-Young from Proverbs 31’s Encouragement for Today devotions, I knew that I had to learn more about her, because she felt like a kindred spirit. We both share a love for “one word” resolutions and intentionally seeking out examples of God’s glory in our every day experiences.

In 2014, the Lord led Dorina to the word “glory” as her one word resolution. As she selected this word, she eagerly anticipated all of the ways she would notice and celebrate God’s glory in the upcoming year.

Fast forward several months into the year. Some might describe Dorina’s reality as anything but glorious. Her husband received heartbreaking news that he had cancer. Soon after receiving the diagnosis, he passed away.

At this point, no one could blame Dorina if she chose to abandon her word “glory” as she grieved the loss of her husband. However, instead of allowing her broken heart to drive her away from God’s glory, she was inspired to look even more intentionally to discover God’s glory all around her. This wasn’t just an intentional focus for her; she made chasing God’s glory an adventure for her daughters, too!

Through these experiences, the Lord inspired Dorina to write Glory Chasers: Discovering God’s Glory in Unexpected Places (an adult Bible study) and Chasing God’s Glory (a picture book for children). In Chasing God’s Glory, Dorina defines “God’s glory” as noticing:

“all [of the] things God created [to] reflect His beauty”

the “reflection of who God is and how He is working in the world.”

After learning about Dorina’s inspiration for writing her new children’s book Chasing God’s Glory, I knew that I needed to explore this book myself. With my background as a reading specialist, I love closely examining picture books for not only the way that they make our hearts respond to the content, but also for the eloquent ways authors inspire children to love their reading experience. Not only is this text beautifully written and illustrated, the text is grounded in solid theology. Our children have the opportunity to not only enjoy this reading experiences for it’s aesthetics. Through reading this text, our children’s view of God grows in seeing the bigger picture of how He reveals His glory in our every day experiences.

Here are some things I appreciate about this text:

This story’s plot consists of an every day adventure of experiencing the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touches of life in a family’s community. Children can relate to the characters’ real life experiences.
Readers experience the young daughter Zayla’s change in perspective as she begins to recognize and search on her own to find examples of God’s glory in her every day life. This is a great learning moment for children to reflect on how they are growing in their own faith journeys.

Overall value for families: Dorina inspires families to launch into their own journeys to notice and celebrate God’s glory.

Friend, what might it be like if we set out on our own adventure chasing God’s glory? One of my college professors called this way of living as noticing “God sightings.” Dr. Bennett consistently challenged us to intentionally search for the ways we could spot (sight) God moving in our every day experiences. What a beautiful thing to inspire our children to open up their spiritual eyes to recognize their own “glory of God” sightings.

This is my prayer for our families: to live our lives with eyes wide open to see how the Lord is working in our every day lives. To not only notice God’s glory, but to praise Him for His glory, too!