I was in show choir in high school (if one searches long enough, one could probably find pictures of the group with the boys wearing powder-blue tuxedos) and one of our big trips was leaving our Iowa small town to come to the big city of Chicago to perform, if I’m remembering correctly, in a nursing home and at a shopping mall.
My memories of our actual performances are hazy, but I remember more clearly our going to the Shedd Aquarium and the Field Museum. For Iowa high-school students, this was a pretty big deal. The Field Museum is so massive and can be a little intimidating, but we still scurried around to see as much as we possibly could. I use the verb “see” generously here. I think we probably spent an average of 10-15 seconds at each exhibit. At the end of the day, I asked one of the trip’s chaperones, a biology teacher named Mr. Frankenfeld, what his favorite exhibit was. He responded that he was so transfixed by the mummies in the Egypt exhibit, that he never left that area. I was a little dumbfounded. He only went to one exhibit? That kind of careful attention to something was a little lost on me. Now, of course, I’m a little more understanding. He was in awe. There could have been any number of reasons he felt awe. The miracle of ancient Egyptian ingenuity, perhaps. Or that something that old survived for us to marvel at today. Regardless, he took his time and allowed himself to be in awe and wonder.
The subject of awe seems to be popping up a lot in my various news feeds. A recent article in The Atlantic magazine is an example. Here’s a blurb from that article: “Research on awe…reveals both its triggers and its far-out effects. and may
even adjust our worldview to accommodate it. Psychologists have
described awe as the experience of encountering something so vast—in
size, skill, beauty, intensity, etc.—that we struggle to comprehend it. A
waterfall might inspire awe; so could childbirth, or a scene of
devastation.”
I tend to not give awe its due. I notice things that are awe-inspiring, but that noticing is really just a hat tip. “That’s a beautiful sunset. Maybe I should take a picture. Oh, here’s my train stop. Never mind.” “The architecture of this building is really something, but I must keep walking, lest people think I’m weird for standing and admiring it.” And yet the Bible is pretty clear that awe is an emotion we need to cultivate. “Awe” or “awesome” shows up 87 times in the Common English Bible.
Awe reminds us of the grandeur of God, but also it’s a good reminder that God hasn’t gone anywhere. It’s easy to forget that when we’re running around trying to take in as much as we can. As we move into this season of Lent, let us follow the example of Mr. Frankenfeld and take our time and simply be in awe of all that God is.