(Fern Forest Lot #6, Linville Falls, NC)
Hi God! A very exciting “first” for me today – I am sitting underneath a grove of laurels in a camp chair… on “my” property!! (Well, actually, Your property!) It still hasn’t completely sunk in yet. God, your goodness and grace just astound me. There’s no way this could have happened without Your intervention. This is the first miracle to happen in this journey… and I’m certain it won’t be the last.
I’ve been reading a little book by Donald Miller called "Jazz Notes", which is actually (unbeknownst to me when I bought it) a collection of mostly excerpts from his book "Blue Like Jazz" – a favorite of mine – plus a little bit of new writings intermingled with the excerpts. A couple of passages have resounded in my soul, and I’d like to give my “take” on them.
It comforts me to think that if we are created beings, the thing that created us would have to be much greater then we are, greater than our under-standing. If we could understand everything about God, would we be in awe of Him? Would we consider Him worthy of our worship?
When we worship God, we show our adoration and praise to a Being our minds and life experiences don’t give us all the tools to understand. For example, God is eternal. Eternity is something the human mind can’t grasp. (1)
I think that this sheds new light on the phrase that shows up in so many worship songs – “worthy of (my/our) praise”.
There was a time when I used to sing this phrase without really examining its true meaning. I have since come to realize that this proclamation to God is an acknowledgement that many things that we worship aren’t truly “worthy of our praise”, especially when compared to God.
We middle-class Americans praise many things, from our favorite soda to our favorite football team to our favorite pizza toppings. We even go so far as to declare these things (and many others, in today’s vernacular) to be “awesome”, which literally translates as “awe-inspiring”. (I say it pretty often, myself!) Now don’t get me wrong – I’ve had some pretty great pizzas in my day, but I’m not sure I was exactly “awed” by them. And none of them (even the ones with double cheese) have evoked an emotion that even comes close to the way I feel about You, God! You, and You alone, are truly worthy of my praise. I tend to misdirect and misappropriate my worship, praise, and devotion far too frequently.
Truly, my brain can’t wrap around anything close to a concept of who You are, how powerful You are, how far You can see, and how much You love us all. And I have no concept of eternity whatsoever – I can’t even start to figure that out! Louis Giglio, founder of the Passion movement, puts it this way:
Life is the tale of two stories – one finite and frail, the other eternal and enduring. The tiny one – the story of us – is as brief as the blink of an eye. Yet somehow our infatuation with our own little story – and our determination to make it as big as we possibly can – blinds us to the massive God Story that surrounds us on every side. (2)
I heard a Christian speaker once who asked his audience to imagine a large telephone pole laid on its side at the front of the stage where he was speaking. Then he asked them to imagine a tiny vertical scratch on the pole. He said that the pole was all of eternity, and our life was the width of the scratch! He said that we get so caught up in our lives within the scratch (i.e., in our “scratch-houses”, our “scratch-jobs”, our “scratch-cars”, etc.) that we forget that we’re all just tiny scratches in this telephone pole of eternity.
It’s impossible to imagine a God that even extends out past the ends of the telephone poles on either side! But that’s how big You are, God. That’s why You are worthy of my praise – because You can’t be measured – You can’t be put into a neat little formula. To attempt this would actually be an insult to You. Worship is an acknowledgement that we cannot fathom Your greatness, we cannot grasp Your mercy, we cannot measure Your power. Miller says:
Too much time is spent charting God on a grid. Too little time is spent allowing our hearts to feel awe. So, by reducing Christian spirituality to formula, we deprive our hearts of wonder. (3)
And so, to truly worship You, God, involves faith. We must accept that which we cannot prove with postulates and formulas. We must rely on something we can’t even fully grasp. We must believe in the supernatural (literally: “above natural”). As Miller says, “You cannot be a Christian, can’t truly worship God, without being a mystic.” (4)
God, I will have faith in You, even when it seems illogical to do so. I will follow You, even when I can’t get it all to add up in my finite mind. I will trust You, even when I can’t understand You. Because as I trust You, as I follow You, as I have faith in You, I begin to understand Your power, Your heart, and your nature better and better – I begin to see You more clearly the more time I spend with You. Like Miller says:
I am early in my story, but I believe I will stretch out into eternity, and in heaven I will reflect on my early days, the days when it seemed sometimes like God was down a dirt road, walking toward me. Years ago, He was a swinging speck in the distance. Now He is close enough that I can hear His singing. Soon I will see the lines on His face. (5)
I too, God, can hear your singing sometimes. Faintly, amongst the bustle of life, I hear Your song. And the song is calming to me. It is encouraging. It is joyful. And I want to hear more of it.
I trust You, O God, with my future. I don’t know exactly what it holds, but I know You will be there, and I know that You love me, and that I will know You better then… so I am not afraid. I will walk with confidence and faith. I can’t wait to see what You have waiting for me! You are worthy of my praise, both now and forever. I love You, Abba!
ENDNOTES:
1. Donald Miller, Jazz Notes (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Inc., 2008), 99.
2. Louis Giglio, i am not, but i know I AM (Colorado Springs: Multnomah Books, 2005), 9.
3. Miller, Jazz Notes, 108.
4. Miller, Jazz Notes, 100.
5. Miller, Jazz Notes, 10.
