This is the second part of my previous musings about awe, the first of which you can find here.

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part two

The sky tonight is such a deep, pure blue. There’s a lone star next to the moon; these two are the first to arrive to the fete of the evening. It’s wintry chill outside, and still. It’s a night when I almost could change colour loyalties, it’s that beautiful.

There is something about blue, something wistful and sweet. It’s wholly placid. Wistful is one of my favourite words, because so often it describes how I feel: “full of yearning or desire tinged with melancholy,” “pensive,” “musingly sad” (www.merriam-webster.com). It’s not that I’m depressed – far from it. I just oftentimes feel this longing inside, for more, for wholeness, for something greater. It’s difficult to express in words, but since I’ve started writing about it, I suppose I have a certain degree of responsibility to do so.

What’s this longing for? I can’t think of any way to put it except that I feel a yearning for eternity. Nothing earthly can completely satisfy me. Nothing. I’m not necessarily only talking about money or popularity, although I hear the more of those sort of things you have, the more you want. I’m referring to things like success, or health, or relationships, or career, or food… or love. Of course, a milieu of all these things together can make one quite content, for the most part. But is it enough? I say no. Why? Because there are stars out there. There are unvisited lands. There are people who need love. There is eternity.

Sometimes I’m so filled with joy that I feel I might burst. In those moments, I am absolutely content. And still, there’s a longing. Because in those moments, I’m so close to what I think eternity must be like (eternity for those who know Christ and whose names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life). Moments with no troubles, no tears of sadness. Moments of sweet, simple freedom and peace. In those moments, sometimes I’m the most wistful of all.

Similar to Psyche in Til We Have Faces by Lewis, though perhaps less extreme:

“I have always … had a kind of longing for death … It was when I was happiest that I longed most. It was on happy days when we were up there on the hills, the three of us, with the wind and the sunshine … And because it was so beautiful, it set me longing, always longing. Somewhere else there must be more of it. Everything seemed to be saying, Psyche come! But I couldn’t (not yet) come and I didn’t know where I was to come to. It almost hurt me. I felt like a bird in a cage when other birds of its kind are flying home.”

I wrote a poem one night after driving through the mountains at sunset. Over the space of two hours I felt such an intense and sincere longing as I gazed out the window at rivers, green fields, rocky mountains, and all the glorious colours of evening. I felt this longing to fly, to continue over every next hill and peak to see what was beyond. A longing to be in the sunset, with its colours swirling around me in wholeness and light.

We all long for [Eden], and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature…is still soaked with the sense of exile.

  (Tolkien)

But we have taught ourselves how to hush this longing when it whispers to our hearts. We decide we just feel close to nature or in-tune with something grand and vague, or we determine how to regain control of things. This is how we often respond to awe when we encounter it.

Because the uncontrollable isn’t safe. It’s too great. And God is too awesome for us. Too powerful.

But, wait, Reader. Because when we surrender to His holiness and acknowledge our weakness and dirt, and let ourselves be washed by His grace, then He gives us His powerfulness and He puts His same Spirit in us. He still isn’t manipulatable or touchable. Or safe.

But I don’t want safe. I want good.

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How, then, shall we be?

In awe.

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I have this idea for a series of posts that discusses how the life of a Christian should 1) reflect Truth about God and 2) demonstrate an abiding in Him through bearing fruit. The first post is here. My first overarching theme was to be God’s sovereignty, and this post falls under that umbrella. I don’t mean the posts to be lectures, because they are actually the outpourings of what I have learned and of how God has corrected me. I am one who needs an extraordinary deal of re-shaping, and all I hope to do is share the resulting thoughts with you. I eagerly welcome your wisdom and engagement in these discussions.

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part one

Awe. A sense and reality of utter peace and complete insignificance. Have you ever experienced it? Maybe you felt like crying, or you actually did cry. Maybe you were breathless. Maybe you were stunned. Speechless. No response but to be and take it in. Breathe deeply and gladly.

To me, this is what it is like to encounter the Presence of God, to catch a glimpse of His glory. Awe is not something you can muster up. It isn’t an emotion. It is a God-given realization of His greatness and an abiding in that Presence of His. Alas, ‘greatness’ is too common and understated. We use this word in reference to professional athletes just as much.

In fact, I think that this is actually a deeper, serious issue. We live with such a desire to control our own lives and outcomes, to serve our own wishes, to get cozy with the world so it will treat us well. Why? We must not really know Who God is, or what He is like, or we haven’t understood His awesomeness.

Let’s begin with that word: awesome.

Wonder. Love. Majesty. Holiness. At the end of it all, we can but say “Holy, holy, holy.” I think of the imagery of John’s Revelation – at numerous points, the elders and living creatures simply worship God Almighty, all-glorious and worthy of praise. Our tangible experiences of God’s holiness are so few, if we have them at all. We give so little of our thought to the greatness of God. We think about how He loves us, how we hope He hears us and cares about us, how we really hope He gives us what we desire.

But we don’t often consider how little we are. How little control we have. And if those thoughts do come to our minds, I think we banish them. I think we don’t let those thoughts direct us to God’s awesomeness. Why do we avoid acknowledging it?

I think we’re afraid. It’s like thinking about the infinity of the universe. That vastness and emptiness puts fear in us, because it’s SO big and uncontrollable and far and it. never. ends. I’m afraid to think about it. My mind might fizzle out from trying to understand it.

And so maybe we’re scared. God is too great and vast. Which is exactly why we should meditate on Him and be in awe of Him. We should acknowledge His power and glory and holiness, even if it makes us afraid. Even if it makes us realize how squashable we are. We are rather powerless and unglorified and completely unholy. I mean, we even fear people who are more powerful than we are; why shouldn’t we fear the only God, Creator and Judge of us all?

We should. We should fear Him and we should love Him. Machiavelli thought rulers could only aim for one of those. But rulers aren’t God. Rulers don’t die for their people to save them from destruction, call them their children, and then proceed to give them life and peace and joy and discipline and consequences. Fear and love are all mixed up together and this is awe.

This is when we acknowledge that we have always been deserving of death, yet God has saved us. This is when we shield our eyes from Him because He is too glorious for us to behold. This is when we bow in reverence, yet sense His sweetness and peace. This is when we respect His anger and delight in His good nature. This is when we finally desire Him, with longing, even as we know He holds our fate in His hands. Because He is Creator and Judge, yes; but He is also Saviour.

Why do we try so much to be our own gods?

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 to be continued…

When I write on Mondays, I want to talk about our state of being, and how we are meant to live. Society and culture everywhere lacks some or other of what God calls us to. There is so much glory and goodness awaiting us!

Since this is the first post of its kind here, I want to recall an older post theme, because it is, I believe, where we have to start. This is from April 2012, my first year of grad school. Who was I back then? I don’t even remember.

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I have learned over the past two semesters a tremendous amount about myself and, infinitely more importantly, about God. Through class? Well, maybe a bit. But mostly, I have learned through encountering difficulties, experiences, and relationships that have acted as agents in God’s brilliant plan to kill me so that I may live (Romans 8:13 tells us we will live if, by the Spirit, we put to death the deeds of the body). And that I may live for His glory, not for myself.

 Side note: Paradox is a given in the things of God, even at the most elemental level: Christ, the Son of God, was also human. God is just and merciful. If you stop trying to meet your needs, your needs will be met (Matthew 6:33). If you try to save your life, you’ll lose it, but if you lose your life you will keep it (Luke 17:33). You can call them contradictions if you like, but by God’s doing they are not incompatible truths. Have you ever asked anyone a question with two options, and they answer, “Yes”? I think it’s a little bit like that. In each of these statements, both clauses are true; they do not exclude one another. I am not a philosopher, so I will not attempt a lengthier discussion of paradox and premises and all that. At any rate, God is far above philosophy, which can never fully understand nor explain the ways of God. Isaiah 55:8-9: For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.

One foundational thing God has done and is doing is renewing my comprehension of His sovereignty. I have been awed by His might, His forgiveness, His sweetness, His fearsomeness, His grace. I have seen how tiny I am. And what a mystery, that this all-powerful and holy God has loved a weak and blemished creature like me. It is beautiful to be loved by your parents, friends, siblings, mentors, beloveds, children. But of such greater magnitude and wonder is it to be loved by Love Himself, infinite God, humble Saviour, gracious Spirit. O Lord, God of Israel, there is no God like You, in heaven above or on earth beneath, keeping covenant and showing steadfast love to Your servants who walk before You with all their heart… (I Kings 8:23)

There is none like God, O Jeshurun, Who rides through the heavens to your help, through the skies in His majesty. The eternal God is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms… (Deuteronomy 33:26-27)   The fact that God is Who He is gives my life meaning. It is the overarching Truth, under which come myriad other truths, which all are part of this one Truth. I mean that the truth about my identity comes from God being Who He is. The truth about my salvation comes from God being Who He is. And the truth about how I ought to live comes from this Truth as well.

Through this understanding, I have come to believe that if we understand God’s sovereignty, we may approach a more robust and peaceful understanding of how to be. In other words, God’s sovereignty is our serenity. If we have a proper view of God, His character, person, and authority, our paradigm may be renewed as we learn how to rightly love Him. Sovereignty changes everything.

The Monday posts will be part of a series about the many areas in our lives that are transformed when we live intentionally acknowledging God’s sovereignty. I write this series rather selfishly, because I want to benefit from such transformation and need to learn the things I am going to write. My hope is that, by writing and reading and thinking and learning and praying, you and I will both come to a deeper knowledge of the person of Christ. I don’t mean knowing about Him; I mean knowing Him. The former is historian’s work, and we should possess such knowledge, but if we stop there, we may still hear Him say, “Depart from Me, I never knew you.” Let us seek to know God, if such an audacious thing may be said by a human. I think that’s what He wants – for us to know Him, and to glorify Him on the earth. May that be our heart’s cry and our utmost desire.

When I wrote that sovereignty changes everything, I meant it. More and more ideas to write about keep occurring to me, more facets of my life that need the transforming knowledge of the sovereignty of God to manifest itself. Eventually I’ll run out of things to say, but not for a long time. I am eager to begin this journey, and I hope it is a blessing to you, reader, as well.

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I’ll be reliving some other old posts the next several Mondays, because I can’t stand to leave them behind. Not for any merit of the writing itself, but for the sake of the theme and content.

And you, friend, please join me. If these are conversations that draw you in some way, please, reply, question, challenge, affirm, all of that. I need your voice in my story.