I have lived in the Pacific Northwest since I was four years old. I have seen mountains. I have seen lakes. I have seen waterfalls. I have seen meadows, beaches, and trees. I have visited Mount Rainier, the Columbia River, and Hurricane Ridge at least a dozen times each. I know what sixteen feet of snow looks like. I know what a sixteen-foot wave looks like. I know what sixteen thousand wildflowers look like. This is my home; this is where I grew up.
I grew up in a Christian home. I remember memorizing Genesis 1 as a three year old, opening and closing my little hands as I voiced, “He made the stars also!” I remember watching a dramatic presentation about David and Goliath when I was four years old and thinking that the giant had actually died. I remember attending Christian conferences, reading Christian books, and watching Christian films. I grew up in a Christian environment that was saturated with truth.
Looking back over the years, I am filled with two dominant feelings. First of all, I am infinitely grateful to God for my parents who faithfully planted seeds of truth in my life. It takes faith to scatter seeds. Not all seeds sprout, and it is only God who can give the increase. Secondly, I am ashamed to admit that I sometmes feel immune to the glories and beauties of truth. I am used to it. I can lose sight of the wonder of precious doctrines like redemption, regeneration, and the resurrection. The miraculous newness, the tangible reality, and the disintegrating glory of these truths can be lost in the tangle of Christianese.
I don’t want to live there. I want to fight to see the miracle of regeneration, the reality that God can supernaturally take a dead heart of stone and replace it with a living heart of flesh. I want to fight to see the beauty of God’s mercy that is new ever single morning. I want to fight to regain the childlike awe that marvels that my heart beats, that water is wet, that grace is free.
The problem is not a lack of truth. The problem is not a lack of beauty. Bigger bookshelves and grander waterfalls won’t solve the problem because the problem is the blindness of my own eyes and heart. I need God to open my eyes every morning to see the glories of His truth and the beauties of His world. As we grow in grace, may we also grow in childlike wonder and take time to marvel at the “obvious.”