The Humble Will See God
Can any of you remember the first time you looked in a microscope? I’ve heard that science teachers never get tired of witnessing the first time a child looks in a microscope. It’s like this entire new world is opened up to them. A world that is all around them all the time, they just didn’t know it.
The same analogy could be applied to a telescope. Not only are we blind to the microscopic happenings around us, we are also oblivious to the goings-on of our galaxy. Our perceptions and perspectives are profoundly limited. We don’t even really know what’s happening in the room next to us. That’s how ignorant we are.
Years ago, I volunteered with a group called Creative Mornings. We hosted these free breakfast lectures for creatives - architects, graphic designers, and the like. This particular event was at a cool townhouse in Uptown Dallas that had been turned into offices for a design firm. The event went great, and afterwards I was just lingering outside when this random guy started chatting with me and another volunteer.
He asked us if we knew about the building across the street. We didn’t. It looked like an old church building. It wasn’t falling apart, it just didn’t look like it was being used as a church anymore. He said something was quite extraordinary inside that building. So he persuaded us to try and peek in the windows.
I was intrigued. We walked across the street, but when we walked up the steps we saw that the windows had been papered over on the inside. That only made me more curious. I tried to look through a corner where the paper had peeled back. I only saw darkness. Then the stranger - whom I never even got his name - started knocking on the door. “I kind of know the guy,” he said, “maybe he’ll let you guys come in.” I was dubious.
To my surprise, within seconds the giant wood door opened and a disheveled man peeked his head out. They chatted for a second and then I found myself being escorted inside. As I walked into the old sanctuary space, I slowly started walking in slow motions as astonishment cascades over me. You could have given me 10,000 guesses of what was inside this old church building and I wouldn’t have come close. It was dinosaurs.
Not posters or plastic toys. Real, 25 feet tall, millions of years old, dinosaurs. Turns out, the disheveled man was a legit paleontologist and he was storing his prize possessions in this old church. Along with other specimens, there were two complete fossilized skeletons of a Triceratops and a Tyrannosaurus Rex. My brain seemed to clog as I tried to compute what I was seeing. There were dinosaurs in Uptown! Not in a museum. But in a random building that I was haphazardly standing by in midmorning on a Monday. That’s real. That happened.
This is what I’m trying to say: there is so much going on of which we are unaware. We are limited and humility is appropriate. But also, sometimes we see the matrix - the curtains get pulled back and we catch a glimpse of the extraordinary. Like catching the iridescent colors shining through a tree canopy in the fall. Or looking back to see someone singing in their car at the top of their lungs in pure ecstasy. Or the way I can feel a slight tingling sensation in a singular muscle of my body when I sit very still. Wonder is all around us. It reminds us that we don’t live in a boring world. And for those curious enough to look, the miraculous emerges. It evades the busy. Those who know too much will likely never see. Yet, I assert that the humble will see the Divine. Though it might take an intentional practice of taking second glances.