(Site B53, Linville Falls Campground, Blue Ridge Parkway)
It’s about 9:30pm, and I think the rain has finally passed. A few moments ago as I walked to the restroom, I looked up through the holes torn in the thin blanket of low-lying fog that hung over the campground and saw what seemed like a million stars in a black cloudless sky. It was a sight that was particularly striking to me. We never see that many stars back in the Charlotte metro area. There, as in so many other highly-populated areas, a nightly burglary takes place in the skies above, as our society’s crass, noisy light robs us of a precious treasure – the stunning, delicate beauty of countless stars and galaxies stretched out to remind us just how small we really are. It is a sad depiction of much of our lives on this planet, as we allow the man-made and mundane to drown out the miraculous and majestic.
Tonight I finished reading “Leading With a Limp” by Dan Allender, PhD, who is president of Mars Hill Graduate School in Washington. This book is a thorough, insightful look at the advantages as a leader of acknowledging and even embracing one’s weaknesses. Throughout the book, Allender refers to different pairs of words – some of them contrasting, some of them co-related. I think I want to reflect on a few of them over the next few journal entries, beginning with Gratitude and Awe. Allender introduces the word pair this way:
What exactly does it mean to grow character? Character is grown to the degree that we love God and others. Love that is true and eternal begins with worship of the God who redeems people by his unexpected and unreasonable grace. We grow in character, then, to the degree we are captured by gratitude and awe. (1)
GRATITUDE
In essence, gratitude is the act of being thankful. It is the acknowledgment that someone has given you something or done something nice for you. Allender continues:
I know that every breath, each heartbeat is a gift. Not a single molecule of what I see is deserved or earned. The matchless gifts of my wife, of beauty, of the sun, land, water, and air that surround me make any presumption of ownership or entitlement completely laughable. All is a gift.” (2)
As I have been driving around up here in the mountains over the last few days, I can’t help but be grateful to you, God. Grateful that You created all of this beauty for us to enjoy. Grateful that I am still healthy enough to hike up and down these mountain trails. Grateful that I am wealthy enough to own a reliable SUV to drive up here (my Xterra, “Rex”). Grateful that You know me and hear me and see me and love me and call me to follow You.
Gratitude is recognition of YOUR GOODNESS.
AWE
Allender defines awe like this:
Awe is the capacity to bow in the presence of something or someone more glorious than ourselves. It is the proper posture of a creature before both the Creator and the Creator’s greatness as expressed through creation… We prostrate ourselves before greatness because we were built to admire and honor glory. (3)
Awe is my default response as I gaze at the beauty of these mountains. Awe is almost inescapable up here. On my way up here on Monday, I saw a double rainbow, one of which was perhaps the most brilliant I have ever seen. A few moments later, I saw a complete rainbow as I drove through the town of Linville Falls, NC. Yesterday, I stood at the rim of Linville Gorge and watched as fog rose from the trees and began to combine to form clouds. I have seen trees whose fall colors were so bright, they looked as if they had been set ablaze. And as I sat at my campsite picnic table this morning, I watched and listened as two tiny chipmunks gathered nuts in their cute little cheeks, taking occasional breaks to chatter and chase each other around and up and down the nearby trees. God, You are Creator of both huge and small. As my pastor, David Henderson puts it, “All of this was Your idea.”
Awe is recognition of YOUR GREATNESS.
While gratitude focuses on what You have done for me, awe focuses on what You have done, period. Both are correct responses to You, and both are necessary postures for us as followers of You and as leaders of others. And the absence of either can work to our detriment.
The absence of gratitude is entitlement – the feeling that I deserve or have earned something, and expect it from God. It is the act of exercising and pleading my “rights,” even though I laid all of them down at the cross when I became a follower of Christ. The absence of awe is complacency – the practice of moving through life without looking up; without acknowledging the miracles that we experience every day we live, no matter where we may live.
Gratitude and awe help to keep us both humble and God-focused, as we declare with our lips, heart, and lives that You are God and we are not… that we are finite and You are infinite. As simple and elementary as it may seem, we must always be mindful of one of the first prayers we learn as a child: “God is great… God is good.” Gratitude and awe enable us “to confess daily our desperate need for a greater wisdom and glory than we have today. We will one day apprehend God face to face; today we are given a gracious glimpse of his back. Each encounter with glory stirs a deeper desire for more. Therefore, we are called to be lifelong learners.” (4)
God, forgive me when the pace of my everyday life robs me of gratitude and awe. Help me to focus myself on You – Your goodness and Your greatness.
ENDNOTES:
1. Dan Allender, Leading With a Limp (Colorado Springs: Waterbrook Press, 2006), 144-145.
2. Allender, Leading With a Limp, 146.
3. Allender, Leading With a Limp, 147.
4. Allender, Leading With a Limp, 148.
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