A Believer from Beauty

My family didn't do many "family trips" when I was growing up, but there were a few. Specifically there were two little road trips to Washington State to visit my grandparents in a little town called Port Townsend. I was 8 years old the first time we traveled there so the "little town" seemed large and exciting. Heather and I went back as adults and now I know with certainty that it is indeed a little town.

Driving 1000 miles in a 1987 Chrysler Voyager minivan with a family of five makes for good family bonding. My brother and sister rotated the back seat for taking naps and I sat listening to a Walkman - that's right, a Walkman! - or sleeping against the window with my head bouncing back and forth on the glass. That trip took forever.
My parents did a good job of stopping for special experiences, like McDonald's, gas station restrooms, and the Trees of Mystery; that helped break up the monotony of my dad's unleaded foot (we went over 60 MPH only on the downhills) and the beauty that is Highway 5.

One memory that I have that has stuck with me all these years is when we were driving by Mt. Shasta. It was my first time ever seeing a huge mountain like that and it made me feel even smaller than I did at 8 years old. As I starred out of the window I could see my reflection in the mirror with my near mullet long hair, missing front teeth, and baseball hat. In my hand was a Matchbox car. It was a Nissan 300ZX Turbo, my dream car. As I rolled the car along my leg and starred out at Shasta something hit me: if my car moved because I pushed it, then how is our minivan moving? Who is pushing it?

I lifted my hand from the car and watched it to see if it would drive off on its own, but it didn't. My imagination was at peak performance at that age and I had seen the movie Ralph and the Motorcycle, so I thought there might be a chance that it would rev up and take off. Nothing happened. I remember asking my mom, "Who makes the van go?" and she replied, "Your Dad." That didn't make sense because he was IN the car. So I thought of another question: "What makes the van go?" She simply replied, "The gas does."

Again, that didn't make sense to me. But I just dropped it and continued to play with the car and stare out at the vast mountains. That was the moment that I began to think that there is something or someone behind this world that we live in. It was my attempt to understand the complexity of the world through causality. For me, at 8 years old, things just seemed so complex and wonderful for the reasons and causes to be as simple as what my mom had depicted. There seemed to be more to it and there seemed to be a Cause that made things happen.

Though at 8 years old I didn't know about God, that was a trip that made the thought of God, and the reality of God, tenable. It was a defining moment for me in understanding the world. This life and this world is so incredibly complex that it takes the mind of a child to realize that it's a wonderland of infinite creativity and beauty. All the adults had "adult answers" to the big questions of life, but none of them were very pleasing.

Now I realize that when God asks us to have the faith like a child, He doesn't mean that we should be childish, rather we ought to be child-like. A child is enthralled with the majesty of the night sky. A child asks endless questions about the way things are and the purpose behind it. A child stops at intriguing sights, sounds, and smells and allows the moment to be soaked in by their God-given senses. A child has no reservations about declaring the beauty and mystery of things like sunsets, 200 foot trees, or birds in flight.

When I was an 8 year-old boy I began to believe in God. I believed in a God that made mountains, caused animals to wander in the woods, and allowed us humans the freedom to live boring or adventurous lives. I was an 8 year-old boy that had never learned about God in a Sunday School class, heard about God in a sermon, or was taught about God by an evangelist. I learned that God was real when God showed me He was real by opening my eyes to the wonder of the nature around me. Though it would be 9 more years before I would ever set foot in a church - and six months more until I would give my life to the Artist of nature that won my heart in a minivan - I now believed in God. 

To this day I catch myself starring at the night sky, sitting silently listening to the wind in trees, holding my breath as I gaze over a Sierra Mountain canyon, and stopping to drink in the array of colors in a California sunset. I do that mostly because it reminds me of the family trip to Washington where I understood that God is amazingly beautiful. God whispered all that beauty into existence with His powerful Word and sustains it with His powerful Word. It was His good pleasure to make it, and it is my good pleasure to enjoy it.