I heard a preacher recently who talked about visiting the Grand Canyon. His wife really wanted to visit the park, so they drove several hours out of their way to be able to see it.
They arrived at the first viewpoint and got out of their car. The wife was thrilled; this is what she had dreamed of, this is what she wanted to see, to experience! She could sit by the canyon for hours and stare at it.
After about 20 minutes, the preacher had tired of the view. It’s just a hole in the ground! A very big hole and it has some interesting colors and buttes inside of it. But he just couldn’t get excited about standing at the viewpoint and looking at a hole in the ground.
A few years later, his wife wanted to visit the Grand Canyon again. The preacher couldn’t figure out why she liked the Grand Canyon so much, but he loved her and so they made time to be able to hike into the canyon as well as along the rim.
About 20 minutes into hiking in the canyon, the preacher had a revelation. The Grand Canyon is beautiful! Every time they went around another corner, the view changed. The light changed across the day. The colors changed as the hours passed. What a glorious, beautiful place this was! No wonder his wife loved it so much! He couldn’t get enough of hiking around the Grand Canyon; of experiencing what he had only looked at before.
In our walk with Christ, it’s not enough to just look at what God has done. That’s like standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon and looking at it from only one angle. It’s amazing, but it’s not that exciting. After a short time, we get bored.
But if we start experiencing God – if we have relationship with Him and walk with Him moment by moment and day by day – we’ll find that there’s so much more to Him than what we saw at first. He becomes more beautiful and amazing and wonderful the more facets of Him that we experience. It’s like the changing light on the Grand Canyon: it looks totally different at noon than at sunrise, and different angles reveal something you never saw before.
The more you hike in the Grand Canyon, the more familiar with it you become (having visited the park 13 times, I’ve done quite a bit of hiking both in the canyon and along the rim!) The familiarity doesn’t make it boring; instead, it draws you in to experience it in a deeper way. The same is true with a relationship with Christ. The more we get to know Him, the less boring He becomes. We become more intimately aware of Him and Who He is. There is always more to discover about God!
