Mid-week Message

Greetings!

“O YHWH, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. Yonder is the sea, great and wide, creeping things innumerable are there, living things both small and great. ...The trees of YHWH are watered abundantly, the cedars of Lebanon that you planted.” - Psalm 104:24-25, 16

We have just finished a sermon series on Revelation. This book is full of visions of heaven and of God on the throne. These visions are meant to give us hope in God’s presence and to inspire us to feel awe in God. But, sometimes they seem foreign and we wonder how we can enter into that same kind of awe ourselves. Can we find awe in God if we never have our own vision of heaven?

This summer I developed a spiritual practice of reading the Bible and praying either down by the lake or in the woods. At first I was going to these places for the joy of being outside. After several weeks, I realized that being at the edge of such a large body of water and being under the canopy of such tall trees helped me enter into a sense of awe in God’s presence.

God brought order to the waters and caused the trees to spring forth from the earth. The lake is a force and the trees are beings more powerful than I, and yet God has power over them—a power wielded with love for the beauty of the earth and the well-being of all life. The trees and the lake make me feel small in the best sense. Their immensity puts God’s greatness into perspective. These places have gifted me a sense of awe in God’s presence that is wonderful to behold in these uncertain times.

While visions of heaven inspire awe, the beauty and immensity of creation does, too. I encourage you to explore the beauty of the earth and enter into the awe of God in the midst of it.

Grace and peace, Rev. Sarina