By Greg Jones
For most of my life I have gone to Maine in the summers. It is a place of vast wilderness, rocky coastline, and just a touch of civilization. Downeasters are few relative to the square miles of woods and lakes and coast, and so the human being can quickly feel very small in Maine, even when you add in the large tourist population each summer. In many years of walking in Maine woods, canoeing lakes and rivers, and puttering on vast beaches loaded with cobbles not sand, I have also felt naturally humbled by Maine. God has made a beautiful place in Maine — just as of course he has done all over this great planet.
Have you ever been humbled by nature? By God’s creation – to be more precise? We live in a vast world, amidst a vaster cosmos, and if one becomes even for a moment thoughtful, one quickly realizes how small one is in comparison. It is tempting when one contemplates his smallness to become depressed, perhaps, or even insignificant. And yet, the Good News of God in Jesus Christ leads us to a very different conclusion. Indeed, Scripture indicates to us that we are very small compared to all that God has made (and will make after we are gone) — but — nonetheless, the gospel also tells us that the God of all things loves us even as much as he loves himself. We are small, and yet, we matter. To the biggest One of all.
Wisdom, Scripture says, for we small specks in the vast cosmos comes not when we pretend to comprehend our universe or our place in it, but when instead we humbly seek union in our selves, souls and bodies with the Lord of all. Wisdom, the fulfillment of soul and mind, comes not in the consumption or comprehension of the world’s stuff, but in seeking God: in prayer, song, care for others, thankfulness, and the seeking of peace amidst the strife of life.
This Fall, it is my prayer that we Episcopalians continue to be among those wise ones who make the most of the time, and seek God together in these ways.