inklined2write

Suzanne, ( my wife for those of you who might not know) has put up with a lot of undeserved grief from our children. She was a cheerleader while they think of themselves as “true” athletes. It is all done in good fun. Since the kids travel through life blissfully unaware that their mother is much tougher than they think, I thought I should bring to their attention that their mother hiked twenty miles through about 6000 feet of elevation change, with a 30 lb pack on her back without complaining. The summer between our freshman and sophomore year of college she came out and backpacked with our family in the White Clouds, a mountain range north and west of Sun Valley Idaho. The first night we camped in the shadow of Castle Peak towering 11,814 feet above what is called the Chamberlain Basin. Our camp was about where the photographer took this picture. We woke up to the sun climbing over this peak each morning. As I was explaining to my children about their mom hiking this rugged country and washing her hair in the frigid waters of mountain lakes it made me think about God’s majesty. In Psalm 8:1 we read O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. The word for “majesty” means “wide.” The idea is something like standing on the edge of the ocean and thinking, “This is much wider than me. This is amazing.” That feeling of smallness you get standing on the edge of the ocean, or the Great Plains, or in front of a mountain like Castle Peak, or watching the night sky in clear Colorado air, is what we call majesty, a sense of bigness and smallness all at the same time. The second day I climbed Castle Peak and was able to see miles and miles in every single direction I looked. The vista was huge. My feeling was smallness.

There is something healthy feeling my smallness and the largeness of that space. Scientist look at the vastness of the universe and feel proud that they can kind of measure it. They say, “This is so big how can there be a god in here.” David looks at that enormous space and thinks the opposite. He thinks, “How can there be a man in this huge space.” (vs. 4) The feeling of majesty is healthy to us. Feeling our smallness gives us the opportunity to see the “wideness” of God and know our place. When things are too wide for us, we can feel the wideness of God, the majesty of God and know that God is very mindful of our tiny place in the universe. When we are feeling small we can look to the largeness of God. When we are feeling too big we can look to the largeness of God. There is something about the contemplation of God’s majesty that puts everything in the universe in its place. That is called worship. Each Sunday as we come to worship God I would encourage you to leave your worries, your burdens, your need even to see and hear from God, and simply spend the time giving glory to God in Majesty. One hour and fifteen minutes a week to put all aside and just acknowledge the majesty of God and nothing else. My guess is that everything else that you were worrying about will begin to fade away in the “wideness” of God.