Awe.
What is it?
A sense of wonder. A sense of transcendence. A sense of your own smallness.
You stare at the Grand Canyon in awe.
The beauty. The enormity. The grandiosity.
Wading through the Narrows of Zion National Park. Hiking through the hoodoos of Bryce Canyon. Driving through Red Canyon and the Vermillion Cliffs.
You want to take pictures. You want to capture the moment.
But pictures rarely do justice.
You want to take it all in but you can’t.
Something tells you that you are seeing something significant.
Something that beckons you to stop, to pause, to worship.
Not the wonders themselves but the Wonder-Maker behind them.
Of all creatures, we were made to worship.
I don’t think the bighorn sheep or the chipmunks or the deer stop and gaze at their surroundings.
You don’t see animals gather around to be amazed.
Awe was not instilled in them. But in us. As humans.
We are the ones who stand in long lines to ride shuttle buses that take us through the wonders of Zion. Or gather in droves at the rim of the Grand Canyon.
We are the ones who take pictures, draw paintings, write poems, sing songs.
We even gather in large stadiums to watch athletes play games, perform feats, make highlights.
We want to be amazed.
“Did you see that?!”
Awe beckons us to worship.
The question is not “will we worship?” but “what will we worship?”
Will we worship the creation or the Creator?
The wonder or the Wonder-Maker?
Our own mortal bodies and temporal lusts and ambitions or the God who made us and put eternity in our hearts?
The longing of our souls is the longing for God.
So come let us worship and bow down.
Let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker.
For He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture, and the sheep of His hand (Psalm 95:6-7)
