Workbox 09: Awareness

Seeking and seeing the real real

Welcome back to The Workbox! Our mission is to provide actionable, engaging, and reflective tools in a virtual toolbox. Every post that I write is divided into one of these three categories.If you would like to check out previous ones (which I recommend) you can do so below.

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Workbox 09: Awareness

Awareness is an undervalued and often forgotten trait. We naturally tend to fall into routines and patterns of living, waking, eating, driving, sleeping… Eventually, they all start to blend together… If you let it. However, if you practice awareness, you will recognize when you begin to slip into monotony. And the wonderful gift of life that we have been blessed starts to become mundane. Stale. Grey.

Being aware is critical to being human. When we hold in our minds that we are spinning on a rock in space at 1,000mph (or 1,600km/h) and do not wildly veer off into empty space, we begin to understand who we are. When we walk through a field and see all the different grasses, wildflowers, bees, bugs, and birds and how they are all at work and growing, we begin to understand what we are.

This awareness is not a mere physical seeing (though it is not less); it is a comprehension. It is an awareness paired with the understanding that we are creatures created by a Creator. And the Creator is writing a narrative that we have a role in. This narrative has a definite beginning, middle, and end. When we see ourselves in light of this reality, science becomes the art of learning and submitting. How do we understand the world that we are in and work within the limits the Creator has prescribed for it? When we live in the framework of the real real, we are aware of the value of all people as characters in the narrative the Creator has written.

The view from my rear window in our previous home

We cannot let this awareness go by the wayside. We have to train it, practice it, and share it. When we see a beautiful oak tree in the backyard in the late afternoon, the sun shining behind it and hitting the clouds, exploding them into fiery colors, we must share it. We must be thankful for it. We are witnessing the Creator’s handiwork in that moment. It is a one-of-a-kind moment, never to happen exactly like that again. The Creator may make another cloud-exploding-tree-illuminating sunset the very next day, but it will be unique. Every flower ever seen and not seen is grown individually by the Creator. That is wild.

This awareness should keep us humble. When we lose sight of who we are in relation to the Creator, our pride begins to place us in the Creator’s stead. The Tower of Babel in Genesis is a perfect example. They lost sight of who they were and believed they could become like God. Adam and Eve did the same thing. I sin in the same way. So often, we are tempted to look away from our Creator and turn inward to create our own reality. We begin to slant things to suit our own belief structures.

a wasted awareness

In essence, we become Creators. Capital C creators. We believe we can shape our own destinies and even the destinies of others. The world becomes something to peel back, dominate, and manipulate. Rather than to discover, understand, and submit. We name ourselves Master’s of our own Fate. We become entitled, disillusioned, and destructive.

Entitled because we place ourselves over everyone, if only secretly. Disillusioned because the false reality we create does not align with the real real. Destructive because entitlement and disillusionment well up into a prideful rage bent on taking it out on what is true, good, and beautiful. It seeks to bring good down to its own level and corrupt it.

Now, that is the extreme end of the downward spiral. But it all begins when we turn our eyes away from the Creator. That is why maintaining a God-centered, Creator/creature worldview is paramount. It helps us remain humble. And humility is a God-honored virtue. I guess what I mean by all this is that we should be seeking and seeing God, our Creator. We should strive to behold him. And live in the real real.

the real real

What do I mean by the real real? I mean reality. The reality that operates and exists regardless of what I believe or not. God is real. His son is real. God created the world and is sovereign over it. There is a beginning and end to this world. God will judge at the end. There is an afterlife. He has also prescribed a standard by which we should live. There is good and evil. And right and wrong. This is the gist of what I mean by the real real. And this influences how I see the world and the people who inhabit it alongside me.

My wife looking up at the stars

This makes me incredibly thankful that I am a believer of this reality. I believe what God has said in his Word and his world. Yes, even this world speaks of God.

1 The heavens declare the glory of God,

and the expanse proclaims the work of his hands.

2 Day after day they pour out speech;

night after night they communicate knowledge.

3 There is no speech; there are no words;

their voice is not heard.

4 Their message has gone out to the whole earth,

and their words to the ends of the world. -- Psalm 19:1-4 (CSB)

The creation proclaims the works and glory of God. They communicate knowledge of God, not some evolutionary, random chance theory that we use to justify the control of others. When we believe that God made the universe and everything in it. We find ourselves placed exactly where we should be, at the feet of God. We humbly see ourselves as small children looking admiringly, lovingly, and fearfully at our Father, our Creator, our God.

The God who made the world and everything in it ​— ​he is Lord of heaven and earth ​— ​does not live in shrines made by hands. 25 Neither is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives everyone life and breath and all things. -- Acts 17:24-25 (CSB)