Reflection This Week
Occasions of Wonder

If asked, I would willingly acknowledge that what I miss most after having moved from the Northwest is the beauty of the landscape: the rolling wheat fields, the starkness of the high desert, the vast lakes and lazy rivers, the majesty of Mt. Spokane towering over it all; Glacier and all its magnificence. All right, the Ponderosa pines, whose long, dirty needles seemed to fall 24/7 were no delight, but the wonder of God’s creation was everywhere and in abundance. And, yes, I often took it for granted. I must admit that I often did not see the beauty of creation when it was starring me in the face.

     What I remember most is driving into Montana from Idaho and coming upon the mountain stream running alongside the Interstate, so calm, so peaceful, begging this non-fisherman to stop the car, wade into the steam and simply pretend to be fly fishing. I suspect one could not get any closer to encountering God than in such a setting. Perhaps some day I will go back and do just that.

     God, of course, is not simply confined to creation. Encountering God is not limited to mountain steams or mountaintop experiences. Occasions of wonder, occasions of encounter are all around us and often in places we least expect. In fact, the most obvious place to encounter God is often the place we either most overlook or most take for granted: the Bible.

     Unfortunately, we often read scripture with a closed mind. We have already decided what this or that passage means and we are not about to change our minds. Even worse, there are those who would so close scripture to us that any encounter with God would be by accident and not because we were seeking such an experience. They want us to see what they see and refuse to allow us to see something different, something more.

     David James Duncan, in His God Laughs & Plays, quotes Montana fly fisherman and philosopher Henry Bugbee, who obviously has encountered the Creator many, many times while wading all those streams: “The tenets of scripture are meant to be occasions of wonder, not the termination of it.” Each and every encounter with God is surprising and different, a stopping-dead-in-your-tracks experience. So should it be every time we open scripture.

     Yet, if we enter that mountain steam with the sole intention of catching a fish or open the Bible looking to validate what we already believe, we will have closed off God’s ability to communicate with us, to help us see what we have not seen before, to hear what we have not heard before. Occasions of wonder are there for the experiencing. God gives them to us every day in so very many ways, but we miss them because we are not open to experience them.

     Again, as Bugbee notes, that is so true when it comes to scripture. There are those who desire, nay demand, that we be myopic when we read the Bible, that we close our eyes lest we see there what we did not see before, that we see only what we want to see or they want us to see. It may be easier that way for it gives us a reason to hold on to what we believe lest we open our eyes so that what we now see forces us to change.

     Every encounter with God makes us new, renews us, changes us. Those encounters can take place anywhere. Those occasions of wonder happen when we least expect them but they only take place when we allows ourselves to be open to them. A fly fisherman who sees only the water will never see God. A closed mind and a closed heart, no matter how sincere or how certain, close us off to God and God to us.    WJP