Graydon, you know, if you are really seeking the Truth, it is not
"Religion" that will provoke the sense of "awe". It is the Spirit
of God drawing you. He is stirring a hunger that is buried deep
within you. No "thing" of the earth will satisfy that for you. If
you have been "stirred" by that "Presence" recently, and you are
really interested in the ride of your life, ask the Creator of your
life, the Ancient of Days, to "stir" you again. He will not let you
down. I remember the first time this happened to me, and it was a
long time before I responded to this "Presence". I went through a
lot of hell before I finally realized His mercy and experienced His
mighty love. All it was was this: I was on a vacation in Germany,
about a dozen years ago. My grandmother and I had been riding in a
tour bus all nite long, and were just entering Bavaria. If you have
been anywhere near the mountains in any number of regions, you have
an idea what I am talking about. I was half awake, stiff, yet still
exhilerated by the adventure of my first trip to Europe, and
listening to piped in yodeling music a la Lawrence Welk. You may
laugh, but it was kinda cool. I had experienced hours of little
hamlets, stuffy body odor, and a nagging stomach longing for
sustenance of some scrap of hotel food when we would finally arrive
at our destination. Long story short, one moment we were riding in
the "flat land" and the next, wow, man alive, we were embraced in
the company of the Alps. To the left and to the right, as far as
you could see, were the mountains. We rode through a strip of
valley intersecting them. The music kept playing, the bus lurched,
and the mountains just remained. They were indescribable really.
Growing up in the midwest I had never seen anything so massive, so
mighty, so beautiful. And me and the bus, so small, our progress so
slow in comparison to the substance of the "hills" surrounding
us.
So. That is it. Finally a couple years ago I realized that there
was a vacuum in my life that somehow for a moment, this experience
underlined for me. Everything is temporary in this life. Even those
mountains, as ancient and as enduring as they seem to us in our
short lifes, are temporary and are a part of a cycle of earth's
change that they could be leveled, or under a great ocean in a few
centuries from now. Noone (who would know?) would see or enjoy
them. No bird would nest in their tree tops. No family of bears
would nestle in one of it's caves for protection from the blasts of
a winter storm. As I rode that bus intersecting the Alps for the
first time in my life, I felt humbled, and safe, and in awe. For a
moment, from a distance, God came close and touched my emptiness. I
longed to be a part of that place. Now I know it isn't anything
intrinsic to the call of the Bavarian bellow (even tho I still
recall it fondly), but the draw of the Heart of my Father, who made
me, is mightier than the beautiful Alps, but, who like a mighty
Mountain is my safe, awesome, refuge, who "always was" and "always
will be". He calls to His lost children to be reunited with Him in
His Glory. That "Presence" finally did break through the haze for
me, and it was a mighty shower of light burning off the fog of
confusion and emptiness. I suppose that i could carry the metaphor
of the mountain a bit too far, because He doesn't just sit on His
mighty mountain condemning us in all of our mistakes. God came to
us in the form of Man, to live through all of our mistakes, and to
have compassion for us. A compassionate God? Without a doubt. A God
who wants the very best for us-so much so that He doesn't want us
to exist for all of eternity in the broken down state that we were
born in, unable to love and be loved as we were meant to be, with a
nature that is self-centered, evil, and limited. He wants us to be
free from all of that. It is His Love that breaks you out of that
prison. I simply began to believe. I couldn't intellecualize it.
How can you intellectualize your love for your parents? How can you
intellectualize the love you have for your children? It is more
than just social and biological. You know we are more than apes. I
believed that Jesus is the Son of God. I believed that He suffered
for my mistakes-sin-I believe (have faith) that He paid the
consequences for my sins on the cross. Something just happened to
my heart. An intangible change rocked my world.
So this may bit a tad disjointed. But I wanted to tell you that it
isn't "Religion", that is awe-inspiring, it is the Presence of a
mighty God, and the hope that He has to touch your heart one day.
Take this personally if you like. I hope you do.
When I was giving birth to my daughter, I remember laying under the
knife preparing to have a "C" section. I wanted a "pelvic"
anesthetic so that I would be conscious as they operated. This had
to be one of the very most important moments in my life. I didn't
have a faith in God yet, but I knew I really wanted to "experience"
this spectacular miracle of creation even though I couldn't have a
natural childbirth. As my boyfriend sat at my side, and the doctor,
nurses, and technicians did their jobs and chatted a bit with me,
all i could talk about was that moment in the mountains and that
Bavarian bellowing...
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