GOD’S GIFT of AWE
One time hiking the Cape-to-Cape track down the coast of Western Australia we sat on a cliff overlooking the well-known lefthanders surf break near Gracetown. We watched the black clad riders below get up and test the waves. And I wondered whether the Creator of oceans enjoys the surf as much as we do.
In the long history of the earth, surfing with boards is a new phenomenon. Yet we are told in Genesis that on the seventh day of creation God enjoyed all that was made. Does that include surfing? It’s hard to imagine. But we know the waves and the swell were there long before we humans discovered the thrill and the fear of riding them.
The Creator shares the natural world with us
Sharing the natural world with us is apparently part of the Creator’s plan for the universe. It is a great benefit of the relationship of love and acceptance God offers to us. Yet, just as in that Genesis beginning, we too can take for granted this connection. We try to domesticate it with our puny thoughts and desires. The Creator, however, always remains Other, beyond and above us. Awe is the gift that reminds us of this.
Awe is that mixture of wonder and fear we associate mostly with the physical world writ large. But when we look for it, we also find awe is prompted by the exquisitely small. Perhaps a delicate flower or the minute building blocks of cells revealed by electron microscope or biochemistry investigation. We can be “awed” in various ways and places and relationships.
Julia Baird recommended in her awe-focused TV program a couple of years ago a daily “awe walk”. Go out of the house or the office with eyes open and heart alert to the natural world around. I would add, even better to do it with others. And with thanks to the God who desires to share closeness with us.
Awe’s mix of wonder and fear
Awe is a gift because its mixture of wonder and fear gets the balance right. It can take us out of our self-focused struggles and connect us to others, including to the One who created all these things. Psychological research shows that the benefit of awe itself is enhanced by sharing it with others. I described in Finding Your Voice how healing in the isolation of the worst Covid-19 year our neighbours found it to watch the sunsets over the Indian Ocean at the end of our street.
Many of the biblical psalms give us words for enjoying and sharing this gift of awe: “The whole earth is filled with awe at your wonders; where morning dawns, where evening fades, you call forth songs of joy.” (Ps 65) And their context brings together what prayer also offers – both awe and intimacy in our God-relationship: “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?” (Ps 8)
We dare not presume on this relationship our Father God offers us. Nor on what we can offer to each other as we work together. All we can do is say thank you and enter wholeheartedly into these great sharing opportunities.
Jennifer Turner
