There is a beauty in the rhythms of life. It is reassuring that the sun rises every morning and sets every night. One can go to sleep knowing that the sun will come up again. And every day closes with the same predictable event, even though each sunset is also gloriously and often breathtakingly unique.

The same is true for the seasons. Spring…..summer….fall….winter…..and then spring again! It helps us to feel secure to have this rhythm. We did not design it (for one thing, who would design winter???) but there obviously IS a design. It is beautiful and something to be thankful for.

There is a beauty, also, in the design of the species. Both we and the animal kingdom have within us an ability to adapt to change. Birds can have their beaks grow longer or shorter. Humans can, over generations, develop a different skin tone to respond to a different climate.  Chameleons really can change their colors.  Old dogs can indeed learn new tricks. The adaptation of species is truly amazing.

What about all this rhythmic beauty? We would never expect a Shakespearean sonnet to suddenly fall from the sky….and yet we are expected to believe that there is no designer behind all of this design? How can that be? We are a brilliant human race and can do much. We can predict the weather. We can manipulate DNA We can even clone. But we only do this by understanding the design and laws that are already present. God’s word says it is the glory of God to conceal things and the glory of kings to search things out. As kings (or scientists) continue to search things out, I wish they would not miss the grandeur of the universe…the magnificent RHYTHMIC BEAUTY in life.

WE ALL NEED OUR OLIVET!  I read this line this morning and the truth of it struck me.  It was referring to that quiet place of separation from the hammer of life.  That “alone with God” space that we all need.  What stress we all live with in our world.  There must be an escape valve.  There must be a way to release the pressure that builds in all of us. Otherwise there is a form of internal combustion. We can call it by different names.   Nerves, anxiety, stress, OCD, insomnia….the list goes on and on.   An extreme form is post traumatic stress disorder.  In some cases the result can be extreme depression or addiction or even killing rages.   In everyone ‘s life rain does fall, plans go awry, dreams die, regrets fill us, tragedies sideline us.  No one is exempted.

How shall we cope?  As a physician, I have watched people try many ways, but there is only one that truly works long term.  The Olivet.  It is the means to “get away” and access the wisdom needed to ascertain truth or have your vision realigned so that you are able to weather any storm.  Storms of loss or loneliness, illness or poverty, fear or regret.

One of my biblical heroes is Daniel.  I named my son after this man.  The biblical Daniel was, as a teen, ripped from his home and made a slave in a foreign land.  He saw brutality and warfare.  He knew the immense loss of having everything he held dear stripped from him at a young age through no fault of his own.  But he had his Olivet, amidst Babylon’s noisy world, by a window in his upper room.  It is where he went to escape the world and commune with God.  Though it landed him in a den of lions it also kept him sane.  He found the strength and wisdom to cope.  We can learn from men like him.

We live in such a broken world.  We are all constantly in danger of falling apart.  And physically we all eventually do!  Death is that reminder of our need for something this world will never offer.  It is a historically, well-documented fact that here has only been one to conquer death and rise again.  And we need to have communion with Him.  And even He, when he was here, had his Olivet where he communed with the Father.