Moments of Beauty

I attended a Nigerian Pentecostal church today and was struck by the different methods of praying, preaching and worshiping God that take place all over the world. The preacher kept repeating that the “ground will swallow your enemies…the ground will swallow your challenges…the ground will swallow evil forces…the ground will swallow…etc” and I almost had to giggle because I thought about my Clinton United Methodist Church that was my most recent church family and how different the prayers sound there. I was struck with just how beautiful it is that we can worship a God that’s so BIG and can be worshiped in such a variety of ways by a diverse set of people and he receives it all for His glory!

Later, Ezekiel and I rode his motorcycle on a beautiful new road that had been a dirt path riddled with potholes only two years earlier. As I looked around, my eyes landed on a holy scene: distinct, grey clouds in a misty haze sitting amongst the mountains formed the background of a luscious, verdant pasture with a few stray trees and a man dressed in a brightly-colored caftan kneeling toward the east to pray to Allah. God was present in that moment.