Life On the Edge of Sheer Awe

Shhh! Sit down and look over there in the vegetable garden.” Linda was sitting in our swing seat on our back veranda. She was pointing towards the garden, which was in the process of getting its early morning watering.

“What are you pointing at?” I whispered as I sat down beside her, “phonophobic tomatoes?”

“I don’t think so, smarty pants, whatever phonophobic means. Look at the top of the first tomato ring on the left,” she said.

I squinted through the droplets of water gently falling on the garden. “My goodness!” I said, “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

“She flew in a few minutes ago. At first I thought she was a large dragonfly. She kind of buzzed around in the spray for a few seconds and then she lighted on the tomato ring and started tossing her feathers back and enjoying a shower. I’m afraid she’ll get so waterlogged she won’t be able to fly out of there.” The concern on Linda’s face was genuine.

Though the bathing beauty was only about 20 metres away in our tomato patch, I wanted a closer look. I stepped back into the kitchen and plucked the field glasses from the windowsill that frames our lake view. Creeping back out onto the veranda I sat down on the swing seat beside Linda. We spent the next 10 minutes passing the field glasses back and forth as we carried on like a pair of peeping Toms watching the bathing antics of the female ruby – throated hummingbird. Eventually the tiny bird wearied of our avian voyeurism, shook herself off vigorously and flew into a nearby aspen tree where she lighted on a branch to preen in the sun.

Linda and I left with Addy for our morning constitutional and when we returned from our walk about 45 minutes later, the little hummingbird was bathing again and two more, a male and a female, were running through the sprinkler. Well, actually they were flying through it. It was an awesome morning.

Since we moved to our cottage on Lac La Hache 25 years ago, we have seen so many things that have been accompanied with the words, “I’ve never seen anything like that before.” There was the blazing red aurora light show one winter night, the loon that was killed by a bald eagle one early spring morning, the otter family that passed the end of our dock in a spectacular ring of bright water one summer afternoon, the coyote that made a mule deer doe swim laps across our end of the lake one autumn evening; and on and on it goes. These occasions have been so special and at times so emotional that, as the Irish are want to say, “they could bring a tear to a glass eye.” That’s what life has been like for us at Lac La Hache. For nigh on 25 years we seem to have been living our lives on the edge of sheer awe. The thing I can’t figure out though is that we have come to take the awesomeness almost for granted.

Oddly, our lives on the lakeshore seem to emulate life in the church. When I reflect back upon the 35 years since I came to Christ and began life in his church, there has been time after time that the phrase, “I’ve never seen anything like that before,” seems to be the only appropriate expression. For me it began with my baptism at the age of 29. Cal Brown was baptizing me together with my infant sons in the little congregation of Grace, Castlegar, B.C. Cal spoke to me just before the service and warned me not to expect a big emotional experience with my baptism. I didn’t, and there wasn’t; until the water was applied that is. And then the Holy Spirit ripped through me like a thundering wind nearly blowing my mind. I had never seen anything like that before. It certainly surprised me. I think it might have surprised Cal, too.

There was the time my Bible study group laid hands on me and prayed for healing from the cancer that I had been diagnosed with about a month after being baptized; the time the Presbytery of Kootenay certified me as a student for ministry and prayed over me; the time I was ordained as a ruling elder and the elders laid hands on me and prayed; the time a half dozen years later when I was ordained as a teaching elder. There was the time when we laid hands on Lila and prayed for healing from a brain tumor and she was healed in spite of the surgery that failed miserably.

There was the time that I baptized and prayed for my dying newborn grandson, Jacob, in the hospital just after he arrived three months premature; and God healed his collapsed and torn lungs right before the shocked eyes of everyone in the infant intensive care unit. There was the time we laid hands on and prayed for Jacob when he was nine years old and his nearly ruptured aorta needed to be replaced. (Not long ago I was praying for this boy, now 13, as he careened athletically down the hill on his snowboard). The list goes on and on, worthy of the book that awaits completion in my computer memory, but always the appropriate expression has been, “I’ve never seen anything like that before.” Just like life on the lake, for nigh on 35 years in the church I seem to have been living my life on the edge of sheer awe.

As to the church, the common thread in living on the edge of sheer awe has been prayer, sometimes accompanied with the laying on of hands. In our house churches, intercessory prayer like this is commonplace. Often what happens in the wake of such prayers is nothing short of awesome.

But here is the thing; even the awesomeness is often taken for granted. I am becoming aware that I have to correct this in my life. Life on the edge of sheer awe aches for a response. The Bible calls this response “thanksgiving” and urges me to give thanks in all things. Life on the edge of sheer awe is meant to be a life of thanksgiving. Currently I am pondering what this looks like for me, how my life would be different. What does it look like for you?