O for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer’s praise… This morning I sit in awe of God’s wonder. Not because of all He has done for me (which is colossal), but simply because of the sheer vastness of His glory. Forgive my use of the masculine form as I refer to God – this is a convention I grew up with. I am keenly aware that God is male and female or maybe neither or a combination of both or maybe He/She doesn’t need to worry about all that, maybe God just is…

This morning, I marvel at His creation. I watched as individual lives drove past me during my daily commute – each living a separate but totally connected existence with me and you on this plane we call earth. We affect each other in so many ways without ever meeting. A total stranger can change our lives in an instant for both good and bad… I think God set it up that way purposefully. Because it’s not just our individual lives that matter to God (and they deeply do – I know this through lived experience) but it’s also about us as a collective. Once many years ago, I had a dream in which God revealed to me a singular truth about life. He told me, it’s all about your relationships… Your relationship with Me and your relationship with humanity. And this has been proven to be a time tested truism for me.

But let’s get back to my wonder of God… As I look out at God’s creation, trees my age and older, each passing through time much like I do, growing taller, sprouting and dropping leaves, shivering in the cold of winter, thirsty when it’s dry – and the thought (and my belief) that God actually intimately knows us all to the dropping of a single leaf in autumn engenders wonder in my soul and a deep gratitude for this care. Imagine God’s omnipotence over 3 trillion trees (you can estimate in your mind how many leaves we are talking about here), 7.4 billion intertwined human lives, not to mention “the birds and the bees and the fishes in the sea and the moon up above, and a thing called love… “. It is in a single word awesome.