Beyond Awe
Beyond Awe
When creation becomes a signpost to the God who came near.
Beyond Awe: When Creation Becomes a Signpost
John 1:1–13 — and an invitation to put down the screen this week.
When the Apollo 8 astronauts orbited the moon on Christmas Eve 1968, they did something unforgettable. Looking back at the small blue marble of Earth, they read aloud to the entire world the first words of the Bible: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Sixty years later, on Artemis II, astronaut Victor Glover did something just as remarkable. He looked back at Earth from that same vantage point and shared his Christian faith — that in the vastness of the universe, we are not random. We are a special creation, made by a personal God.
There has always been something about creation that points us beyond ourselves. You feel it when you stand under El Capitan in Yosemite and your chest goes tight with wonder. You feel it on a hike at Mount Madonna when the late afternoon light catches the redwoods. The pagans of the ancient world felt it too — and made a critical mistake. They stopped at the trees and the sun and the rivers, and started worshiping the things themselves. But creation was always meant to be a signpost. It points beyond itself, to a Creator.
That's exactly where the Apostle John begins his Gospel. He doesn't open with a manger or a baby. He goes all the way back to the spark that started the universe. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." If John were writing today, he might put it like this: you've heard about the Big Bang. Well, the Big Bang wants to come over for lunch.
That's the scandal John is setting up. The personal, relational, triune God — Father, Son, and Spirit — actually stepped into His own creation. The artist walked into the pages of His own cartoon. And that changes everything we thought we knew about whether God can be known.
For most of history, philosophers have landed in one of two places. Spinoza said God is unknowable — nature doesn't point beyond itself. Kant said God is unreachable — there's an infinite gulf between finite humans and an infinite God, and we can't cross it. On their own terms, both philosophers are exactly right. Left to my own strength, my own intellect, my own willpower, I cannot climb the mountain and grasp the infinite. But John writes a third option neither philosopher saw: God has come near. The mountain came down to us.
Then John tells the great tragedy. The Light came into the world He had made — and the world didn't recognize Him. The Creator stepped into the story, and the characters said, we don't want you, please leave. If we're honest, we know that scene because we've all played it. There have been moments when we knew what we were doing wasn't the best for us, and the last thing we wanted was for someone to flip on the lights. We liked the little fabricated world we'd built. We liked being our own god.
But the prologue doesn't end in tragedy. It ends in grace. "To all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God." This is the staggering thing. The Big Bang doesn't just want to come over for lunch — He wants to call you family. And John is careful: this is not earned by family line, by mustering enough emotion, or by being smart enough to figure it out. It is sheer grace. God reaches down and says, I want you in my family. You are my son. You are my daughter.
So here's the invitation this week. Go touch grass. Online, when someone has gotten too wrapped up in the fake world of a screen, people sometimes type a gentle, sarcastic reminder: go touch grass. Get back to reality. This week, do exactly that. Get out of the fabricated world for an hour. Take a hike at Mount Madonna, drive to the beach, or just find your favorite spot in Morgan Hill. (For my part — my road bike has been gathering dust for months. So I'm committing to get out on the trail at least once this week. You can ask me next Sunday how it went.)
But don't stop at the beauty of creation. That's the mistake the pagans made. Bring John 1 with you. Pull it up on your phone, or carry your Bible. Read those first thirteen verses out loud, sitting in the place that took your breath away. And let creation do what it was always meant to do — point you beyond itself, all the way back to the Creator who has come to call you home.
