Reading
Give unto the Lord, O you mighty ones,
Give unto the Lord glory and strength.
Give unto the Lord the glory due to His name;
Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.
Psalm 29:1-2 (NKJV)
Reflection
Sunday Pastor Brandon preached on awe. It’s a topic I believe is very important. For a long time I’ve felt like we, as a culture, are losing our sense of awe. In doing so we miss out on a transforming part of life.
Presbyterian theologian Frederick Buechner illustrates awe by telling of seeing a forest of giant redwoods for the first time: “There were some small children nearby,” Buechner said, “giggling and chattering and pushing each other around. Nobody had to tell them to quiet down as we entered. They quieted down all by themselves. Everybody did. You couldn’t hear a sound of any kind. It was like coming into a vast, empty room.”
Buechner was describing a shift: “Two or three hundred feet high the redwoods stood,” he said. “They made you realize that all your life you had been mistaken. Oaks and ashes, maples and chestnuts and elms you had seen for as long as you could remember, but never until this moment had you so much as dreamed what a tree really was.”
Helen De Cruz, professor of philosophy and humanities at Saint Louis University in Missouri, puts it this way: “Awe increases our tolerance for uncertainty and opens our receptivity to new and unusual ideas, which are crucial for paradigm change,”
Noting that awe is also a spiritual and moral emotion, De Cruz cites the work of others who maintain that “all clear cases of awe” have two components: an experience of vastness and a need for a mental accommodation to that vastness.
De Cruz says, “Awe is a self-transcendent emotion because it focuses our attention away from ourselves and toward our environment.” She sums up by adding that scientists who lack a sense of awe don’t make very good scientist- they lack the necessary drive to dig deep.
Psalm 29 calls the heavenly hosts to recognize God’s awesomeness. My dad taught me to take a moment to go outside and look up to the heavens every night. Seeing the stars fills me with a sense of awe and gives me peace. I’ve taught my grandchildren to do the same.
Prayer
Today, Lord, slow me down. Open my eyes to the wonders of the world around me. Fill my heart with a sense of awe again. Amen.
