Foggy Mornings

The summer after my eighth grade year, my family took a vacation to Colorado. It was my first trip out West, and I was excited to see the different climate and culture that I had studied in school (not to mention my parents telling us over and over and over how great the Rockies were going to be). I looked out the window of our plane intrigued with the view of the flat plains, the numerous cornfields, and the painted deserts, eagerly anticipating the overwhelming expanse of the mountains as we got closer and closer to Denver. When we finally landed and I saw the mountains at the airport and looked at them during our whole drive down to Colorado Springs, I was overwhelmed with the feeling of, "That's it?!?" To my little, suburban eyes they didn't seem like anything that different than I had known in Western Pennsylvania, and I couldn't figure out what the big fuss was about.

The big fuss was about the fact that the particular day that we arrived was one of the rare days of any kind of weather but sunshine in Colorado. The weather that particular day was "foggy," and being from Pittsburgh, foggy and rainy and partly cloudy was what I thought weather was always like everywhere. When I woke up the next morning, however, I looked out the window of our hotel room and felt like screaming, "Where did those come from?!?" The fog that had covered the mountains the day before had lifted and the "mountain tops" that I thought were so unimpressive were actually the foothills of the immense range that was behind it. I was standing amongst greatness and didn't even realize it.

I think I spend a lot of my life caught up in the details of obligations, deadlines, and routine, occasionally aware of God's presence, reducing His power and majesty to a pretty sunset or a good day at work. I say this not to minimize His blessings in these small things, but to point out that too often, I think that I become so comfortable with these gifts that I think that I understand all of who God is, all of what He's doing, when really I've been gawking at the foothills of His greatness.

I had one of those "fog clearing" moments yesterday.

We have a big day at church this tomorrow, a community Open House, that will feature the debut of a new strategy for Family Ministry at North Way with the introduction of a shared family experience designed to present parents with the opportunity to begin/continue to lead their children in developing a relationship with Christ. Realize that I've been studying about this concept for the past two years, creating the plans and schedules and casting the vision to parents and leaders intensely for these past three months, and there I was last night at the dress rehearsal taking notes on all the little details that needed to be corrected before Sunday.

Before the final run-through, we prayed.

It just took a few seconds, but that's all that God needed. He stilled my spirit enough, quieting the storm of details and notes, lifting the fog of the urgent to open my eyes to the expanse and importance of His greatness. What He was doing there, that night, what He is doing now and tomorrow and in the days ahead is so much bigger than me or our church or any one person. I felt as if God suddenly showed me that for whatever reason, He was choosing to use this opportunity as one small piece of a much greater plan that He has been orchestrating on a level I couldn't conceive.

I have no idea what to expect we'll see tomorrow. Perhaps it will come and go seemingly without anything significant happening. Whatever it appears to be, I rejoice in the fact that God is working and moving in the Heavenlies, and I pray that He will continue to get me out of the way and clear the fog of my spirit to humbly recognize in the magnanimous and the mundane His inconceivable greatness all the time.