Currently, I am in month 7 of the World Race, having been to 9 countries now (thanks layovers), I lived in the mountains, the jungles of Nepal, in the villages of Albania, and the slums of India, walked along the Colosseum, bungee jumped over a canyon, swam in the South China Sea, and the thing that continues to bother me is how utterly used to it I have become.
Every month I pack up all my things with and board a plane or get on a bus with 51 close friends, in a country 6000 miles away from home, travel among some of the most beautiful landscapes I have ever seen, eat foods that Ive never tried, and still my focus so much of the time is on how long the travel day is, or how mean the Vietnamese bus driver is, or that I’m sore from carrying my pack around.
Somewhere in the last 7 months, my sense of awe and wonder has been dulled because I have stopped marveling and have dragged everything into a area of commonplace. I have all but stopped clinging to the windows of the bus in awe of the massive mountains in front of me. I have worshipped next to my brothers and sisters of different nations and tongues, all the while wondering what I’m missing at home.
Somewhere along the way, I have become disenchanted with God.
Last month, we lived at the base of these incredible mountains in Albania, and one day I decided to sit outside to worship and read the Word. I looked up to saw the rolling vineyards and the looming mountains, and the weight of the Lord absolutely crushed me.
I was kayaking last week in a canyon in Macedonia, the mountains around all around, the sun on my shoulders, and the cool water under me, and again, the beauty of the Lord’s creation brought me to tears.
We live in such a world of entertainment and instant gratification that when we experience something each day without fully appreciating or dwelling in gratitude for it, it loses its charm. We become bored, ungrateful and disenchanted with the world around us.
“So often we religious people walk amid the beauty and bounty of nature and we talk nonstop. We miss the panorama of color and sound and smell. We might as well have remained inside out closed, artificially lit living rooms. Nature’s lessons are lost and the opportunity to be wrapped in silent wonder before the God of creation passes. We fail to be stretched by the magnificence of the world saturated with grace. Creation does calm out troubled spirits, restore our perspective, or delight us in every part of our being. It reminds us instead of mundane chores: changing the page on the calendar or ordering our snow tires. We must rediscover the gospel of grace and the world of grace.” -Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel
The creation shouts His name, His glory, His love for us. The people we walk by and talk with every day were stitched together by the King of Heaven. Every morning that we wake, we wake because he gives us breath.
Open your eyes to the world around you, notice His hand in everything, let yourself be awestruck by the “mundane” and “ordinary” because HE made it for you. Let His daily, unfaltering love make you jump and weep and dance.
Sit in the enchantment of the fact that we are utterly loved by a perfect Father.
