Homesickness

I had an opportunity today to realize just how powerful general revelation can be. Call me crazy, but working in Niagara Falls, I very rarely actually look at the falls. Today, however, during a break at work, I sat and watched one of the most elegant and beautiful displays of God's power in nature that the world knows for about 10 minutes. I couldn't help but be filled with a longing for God and for all his glory to be revealed in all its splendour and majesty. I think it was something along the lines of what CS Lewis called "homesickness". I was drawn... and I can't help but feel that I'm not alone.

It cannot be denied that there is some mystically divine draw, some special allure to the power and majesty of God that is revealed in nature. Millions of people every year stream to Niagara Falls. It is the honeymoon capital of the world! Why is that? Is it because there are casinos and nice hotels? No... those are there to capitalize on the people that were coming anyway. Rather, people come to Niagara Falls to fall in love, get married, spend their honeymoon, or just to get away, because of the special emotional and spiritual draw to such a place... to such a wonder.

The problem, of course with discussing this draw is similar to the problem of describing why a joke is funny. By the time you're done analyzing it, it is completely demystified, and the mystery is never done justice. It's like trying to explain why just looking at my wife still gives me such a thrill inside... it makes me quiver and smile and want to woo her all over again. But how can you explain why there is that pull? It is, to be sure, more than the sum of its composing parts.

But the effect cannot be denied. God has revealed himself and men the whole world over search for him. And what Augustine said so many hundreds of years ago still rings true in our world today: "You (God) made us for yourself, and our hearts have no rest till they find it in you." God himself is the true sovereign joy, he calls us to himself in things like Niagara Falls by giving us just a hint of the wonder and splendour and majesty and beauty and glory that are his... and we long for that joy. We long for that God, our maker, who knows us intimately, who longs to establish his glory by granting us that ultimate soul-satisfying joy that defeats and casts out any former joy we ever could have known in our sin! What a great God!

But... alas, then it was back to work. It's just interesting to me how it only takes a brief moment to notice all that and to fall all the more in love with our God. But yet how often we go through the day spending hours and hours on meaningless things and never even notice that the wonder all around us was there to be beheld if only we would pause and look...