“O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder / Consider all the worlds thy hands have made / I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder / Thy power throughout the universe displayed / Then sings my soul”
–Carl Boberg & Stuart K. Hine from “How Great Thou Art”
I am sitting on the back porch of the sports pavilion, looking intently over the gravel road and densely wooded area. The sky is ominously gray and the clouds are moving increasingly faster. The pitter patter of precipitation on crisp leaves builds as I survey the first raindrops flying diagonally on the wings of the wind and onto the brim of the balcony. Intermittent flashes of lightning illuminate the darkening spans, surety of the storm’s coming. The stratosphere cracks open with an earsplitting clap of thunder. Growls from the belly of the sky ensue.
As I wait in anticipation for the voracious storm, I look. I listen. I marvel. I think on how small I am and how I would have it no other way. My thoughts continue to meander and find their way out in peaceful lakes of gratitude. For though I live in a world bent towards the biggest and the best, in a society addicted to glory and success, to hierarchies, to followers, and prestige, I sit on this back porch and revel in my smallness and in the reality that I plus God am the majority. Yes, I may be slight, but I am with Him.
Selah.
Now don’t get me wrong, this is not a 50/50 relationship. My contribution is an indisputable zero. All the same, it is to my nothingness that He adds 100% of His Love. It is to my sin that He adds 100% of His substitution. It is to my unworthiness that He adds 100% of His grace, all day and every day. On my good, bad, and unbelieving days, He calls me His.
Thus as the rest of the world climbs their way up a ladder that ultimately leads to disappointment, I rest in my smallness and interlock fingers with the biggest and best and most glorious Being out there. I no longer climb up because He already came down. I no longer try or have to be awesome in and of myself.
Instead, I burrow deeper into my God’s embrace and ask for awe and for lots of it. And little by little, He grants me such, in moments of silence, in the middle of storms, and countless times between so long as I have ears to hear and eyes to see it. After all, He is far more willing to speak than I am willing to listen and desires to teach more than I could ever want to learn.
With that, the clouds sweep right and the sky’s white undergarments reveal themselves behind gloomy outlines. The rain ceases and the air cools. The storm and its darkness has had its stint. But now I notice that far beyond the clouds, further than my eyes could see but what my faith always knew to be true, the Light never stopped shining. It never did. It never will. And that Light will never let go of me. To that end, I continue to look for lessons of the extraordinary in the ordinary. I listen for His voice. I marvel. I think on how great Thou art and how I would absolutely have it no other way.
