When Did We Stop Being Amazed?
In 2019, my wife and I took our youngest son on a spring break road trip through Utah and into Arizona. Our goal was to visit as many national parks as we could in the 7 days we had. Each park we visited was beautiful and unique in its own right.
Toward the end of our trip, we made it to the Grand Canyon, a first for all of us. I remember the three of us standing on one of the overlooks of the canyon and being speechless. I cannot tell you how long we stood there, but the most any one of us could muster was WHOA as we stood there in awe of this magnificent site.
I think about that moment of awe quite a bit and wonder at times where I lost it. Because somewhere between childhood and adulthood, most of us lose the capacity to be awe-struck and we grow accustomed to things that should leave us speechless.
We get busy. We get sophisticated.
We lose our childlike wonder and curiosity.
We get used to things and begin to take them for granted.
And slowly, without even noticing, wonder gives way to routine, and if we are not careful, the routine can become a drain where we lose sight of the beauty and wonder that is all around us.
Stand in Awe
It turns out that our lack of awe is nothing new.
Over the last few weeks I have been studying the book of Jeremiah. As God lays out His case for why He will judge Judah, He provides a pretty serious list of sins, including unfaithfulness, rebellion, and corruption.
However, tucked inside these indictments is something that I saw for the first time this past week. Twice in the 5th chapter, God takes exception with His people when He states the following:
“Have you no fear (translated awe) of me? Why don’t you tremble in my presence?
“They do not say from the heart, ‘Let us live in awe of the Lord our God”
God essentially says that “my people stopped being in awe of me!”
Over time and generations, the people of Judah had grown so accustomed to God's provision that they stopped noticing it.
They became calloused to all God had done and forgot all of His provision over the hundreds of years that they grew complacent, and the awe of God that their forefathers had turned into a blase ho-hum.
Sound familiar?
Familiarity Is a Slow Thief
There is a 9-mile lake that is a 5-minute walk from my home. Many times, when the weather permits, my wife and I will take a walk down to the lake and enjoy its beauty. Often part of the conversation is to never take it for granted.
We deliberately want to be in a place where the views of the lake, the mountains, and all that this place has to offer keep us in awe and wonder. Because here is what I have come to learn; familiarity can make something extraordinary feel ordinary.
I have been married to Susanne for over 30 years. I know her laugh, her tells, the way she thinks. And that familiarity is a gift. But there are times, if I am not diligent, when this familiarity can make me stop marveling at the person she is, and when that happens, I can easily take her for granted, and that is when the slow erosion begins.
The same drift can easily happen with our relationship with God.
We learn the language. We know the songs. We've heard the sermons. We get into obligation mode instead of acting in response to His love and being in awed reverence of His majesty. And without realizing it, we move from wonder to routine.
From awe to familiarity.
From trembling at who God is to simply nodding in His direction on a Sunday morning.
Jeremiah's generation didn't abandon God all at once. They drifted slowly.
One generation stopped telling the next about the wonder of God, all He had done for the nation, and before you know it, fear, awe, and reverence turned into a stale familiarity where the words of worship meant nothing because their hearts were not in it.
What Awe Actually Does
The Psalms are relentless about this. David, a man who had seen God work in impossible ways, never stopped being undone by Him, which is evidenced when he wrote, "When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him?" (Just that fact that the God of this universe thinks about us should leave us all in awe).
That is not the language of someone going through the motions. That is a man genuinely arrested by the magnitude of who God is, as we all should be.
When we lose this awe, when we are no longer speechless, we lose so much of what God wants to do in and through us.
When I stay in a place of jaw-dropping awe, I am aware of my humble standing before an Almighty God, and it impacts how I live in all areas of my life.
Getting Back to Wonder
So how do we get it back to the place God wants us to be?
I don't think that it is all that complicated, and I have listed some things below:
His Word: We first have to know Him. This is far different than knowing about Him; it is knowing who God is, His attributes, His love for us, and His desire for us to be saved by the sacrifice of His Son.
This is a lifetime pursuit, as we will never reach the end of an unsearchable God. However, when I commit to spending time in His Word to discover more of who He is, He will reveal Himself in a way that leaves me at a loss for words.
His Creation: Go outside tonight and look at the sky. Look at all of what God spoke into existence. If that does not leave you with eyes wide and at a loss for words, then I do not know what will.
Remember: It is amazing how quickly we can forget all that God has and continues to do for us. Yet, as we see in Jeremiah and in our own lives today, we as humans can be quite forgetful. This is why we should spend time recounting all of the amazing blessings God has granted to us and do so daily.
We were never meant to get accustomed to God; His very name should daily leave us in awe.
The question is whether we're willing to stop long enough to be amazed again and again.
Running the race with you,
Carlos
This edition was first published in The Life Design Newsletter on LinkedIn.