Yesterday I spent 11 hours driving a minivan back from Johnson City, Tennessee. We spent a week there working with CIY’s Know Sweat program doing mission work to some of the residents of the area, which is one of the poorest in the country.
We started out our week by hiking to the top of Carvers Gap, a vantage point 5500 feet up on Roan Mountain. From there, we had a spectacular view of the world around us, looking down into valleys, across to even higher mountains, and up to the crystal blue sky. The world was so enormous, so grand, so majestic. It was breathtaking. And worshiping God in the midst of His Creation was indescribable.
And yet, the the thing that drew my attention the most was a far cry from the world around me that was actively overwhelming my senses. When I looked down to my feet, I saw a simple sprig of grass waving in the cool breeze. And I was mesmerized.
In the midst of all that surrounded me, all the grandeur and majesty, here was this simple grass sticking up from the ground, tiny and insignificant when compared to everything around me. But I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. I bent down to look at it, to run my fingers through it, to memorize its details. And God touched my heart in a way that still amazes me.
It’s easy for us to imagine God doing something huge like creating mountains. After all, God is a huge God. And yet, He is not focused on just the huge, on the majestic. Even among mountains soaring thousands of feet into the air, covered by tens of thousands of trees, inhabited by hundreds of thousands of animals, insects, and other life, His attention to detail in the minutae was breathtaking.
Though unnoticed, trampled upon, and insignificant to us, He put an amazing amount of detail into this tiny grass. From the purple and tan varigated leaves, to the tiny seeds attached to the stalk with even tinier threads, He did not spare even the smallest detail, and seemingly put as much thought into this tiny plant as He did by thrusting millions of tons of rock upward towards the sky.
And left me speechless, in utter awe.
As I drove back from Tennessee yesterday morning, the van was quiet – my passengers all asleep. This left me several hours of quiet time, just me and God, winding through the mountains. And as I looked across the creation through which I was driving, my mind returned to the time on top of the mountain earlier in the week.
As I sat there with Him, He spoke to my heart that our enemy often tries to make us feel like that sprig of grass on top of the mountain. Worthless. Unimportant. Unnoticed as the rest of creation tramples us underfoot. Lost amidst the sheer enormity of the world around us. But, God reminded me that just has He put such an incredible amount of detail and attention into something as simple as a sprig of grass, so too He puts an incredible amount of detail and attention into our lives. He created us beautifully, uniquely, and He knows us intimately.
We are precious to Him.
