Surely God is in this place – Jackson King
Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!” – Genesis 28:16
Each one of us has a ‘woah’ moment. A moment where the curtain is pulled back on the awe and wonder of creation. A moment like Jacob had when he woke up all that time ago that shows God is with us and will keep us wherever we will go.
My parents went on one of those of those cruises that takes you up and down the coastline between Canada and Alaska last year. Mum came back and couldn’t stop telling me how blown away she was by the vast mountain ranges and ebbs and flows of glacier bay. She described it as ‘I can’t believe this was just here’.
I was on a trip to New Zealand earlier this year and as we were driving through the Tekapo region, friends I was with spotted Aoraki Mount Cook. In an almost identical way to mum, everything else ceased in that moment to be in complete awe and wonder to the world around us. That was always around us. Similarly, I often try and make it down to the beach and watch the sunrise. No matter how many times I see it, as soon has the sun peeks over the horizon, it’s as if I am reorientated to see the truth of things once again. Where I sit there and think ‘woah, surely God has always been here, and I just didn’t wake up to it.’
I had the privilege to join a group of 20 Students from Coomera Anglican College on a week-long trip out west to the country town of Charleville in central Queensland. It was a service trip centred around sharing the gift of music with local communities around the region, including schools and aged care facilities. We spend time embedded in the community to learn more about the life and culture of rural Australia.
Whilst we were there, we took the group to The Cosmos, where you can see as they described ‘an untamed view’ of the night sky (if you’re ever head out that way I would highly recommend). As we head out to the viewing area and they opened the roof, I saw 20 students have this exact same ‘woah’ moment that Jacob had.
It was this moment of experiencing God’s creation that opened the flood gates to days of questions from the group, exploring journeys of life and faith within themselves as individuals and as a wider collective. It left me shocked to hear such vulnerability and authenticity amongst an age demographic that is constantly perceived by themselves and others as “the age of needing to be cool”. It’s this persona that the youth team and I have a tough time trying to crack at our youth group at church. But there was something about this moment, a cosmic perspective that reawakened them to the life that flows through all things around us.
John Muir (1838-1914), an environmental philosopher and conservationist, wrote at lengths about the Celtic vision of the sacredness of the earth and the presence of God throughout. He’d say every life-form, every rock formation is ‘throbbing’ and ‘pulsing’ with the divine, even the stars are being pulsed by ‘the heart of God’. Muir later said, “All terrestrial things are essentially celestial”; everything earthly is of heaven, all matter is essentially spirit, and that the earth itself, is a divine incarnation. A constant representation of creation, death and resurrection.
I whole-heartedly believe that this ‘woah’ moment we had at the cosmos centre was the revelation of a world that is sacred, and a love from God that will not let us go. A reawakening to something that has always been here.
I wonder where your ‘woah’ moment has come from, or where another may occur. I’ll never get over experiencing them. I’d love to hear your stories.
I hope you have a great week,
Jackson