Just a Big Hole in the Ground

(written previously on that facebook thingy)


Some time ago, I visited the Grand Canyon in Northern Arizona with Kelley. For anyone who has seen this majestic sight in person, he or she can relate to the unexplainable feeling of awe and wonder that fills our finite imaginations at this beautiful sight.

One will often hear in regards to the Grand Canyon the sarcastic comment that it's "just a big hole in the ground." I got to thinking -- that's exactly what it is! When explaining this sight from a standpoint concerned only with physical matter, there is a vast absence of matter that creates a sizable hole in the ground. For miles and miles around the Grand Canyon, there is relatively flat land; yet, strictly  speaking, it is just a big hole in the ground.

So what then attracts humans from all over the world to this place? It is not physical matter, it is not science, it is not even history. It is beauty. It is majesty. It is glory. There is an unquantifiable, immeasurable reality of the beauty that our hearts enjoy when viewing a creation so vast, so glorious, so breathtaking, and so awesome in its splendor, that cries out that we were made for a great God. One simply cannot explain our universal attraction to places like the Grand Canyon without admitting that Someone has created natural beauty and deserves to be admired and praised for that creation. Science can attempt to posit the natural causes that formed the Grand Canyon; but science can never explain the beauty, the awe, and our sense of our own smallness when we visit the Grand Canyon.

Not only does the Grand Canyon in its splendor point to the existence of the one true God, but it also points to the GREATNESS of this God. Standing on the edge of a steep canyon wall that reaches downward for thousands of feet into beautifully colored rock makes us realize that we were not created for personal significance, and we were not created to live for ourselves. It's undeniable! We were created to worship and enjoy the only God who is truly significant! Our identity, our joy, our pleasure, our purpose, our lives must come from Him, and our lives must be lived to give Him glory and praise. That is why all humans love places like the Grand Canyon, or the Rocky Mountains, or cliffs overlooking the northern Pacific. We find true happiness, not when seeking to glorify ourselves, but only when we are seeking to glorify this Great God. Are we happy with displaying and enjoying this immensely beautiful God?