That's My King!

Have a Blessed Resurection Day!


That's My King! from Albert Martin on Vimeo.

When I In Awesome Wonder...

There is something about vacations.  It's not just the week away from work, phone calls, email and voicemail that helps relax me.  And although a week away from the routine is therapeutic, there's more to it.  For me, the best thing about a vacation is the ability to take time away from being task oriented, schedule driven, and bound by chores and let my mind wander.  To just think with out interruption.  It helps when you spend a total of 14 hours of driving with the kid's watching movies and the wife reading.  But it seems that this last trip really stood out for the serious contemplation time I had, and the things I learned.

When we planned the trip, I agreed only if I could spend at least one day, preferably two, sitting poolside somewhere with nothing but a lounge chair and the Kindle.  Since Las Vegas is only four hours away and next to one of our destinations, it would be a perfect place.  I had been to Vegas 5 or 6 times prior, all on business.  This would be my first time to experience Vegas as a vacationer.  I'm not a fan of manufactured fun.  You know, the places where you behave a certain way because your supposed to behave that way when you are there.   Vegas is the king of those places, and I don't get much of what happens there.  Likewise, I'm not a big fan of hype.  Vegas thrives on it.  A Hotel that looks like a pyramid!  Fountains that shoot water higher and better than those fountains in your hometown!  You'll have fun!  Live like a member of the rat pack!

Too good to be true.  I left the city with a "it's cool and all, but..." taste in my mouth.  Don't get me wrong, I got two full days by the pool, finished two books, the kids had fun in the pool and they got room service!  But the reality is that Vegas left me wanting.  Unsatisfied.  Unable to live up to the promises that it advertises.  The Hype can't live up to the reality.

Next we drove to the Hoover Dam.  First, let me say, it is cool.  Especially to a construction nerd like myself.  It is an impressive feat of engineering and construction, especially considering the 1930's technology that delivered it.  But I was just as equally impressed with the new bridge that went over the canyon and dam.  Maybe I've seen too many documentaries on the Discover or Science channel, but I was expecting...more. 

By now, we are at Wednesday of the trip that started on Sunday, and you are probably thinking I'm not having fun.  Quite the contrary.  I've been with my family - in the same room - for 96 hours straight.  I've read a couple of books, I'm relaxed, and we've eaten very well.  If the vacation had ended there (and for a brief time, I thought it would - car trouble, of course), it would have been worth it.  It's just that, well, you know that feeling you get when you've had fun, but you were just hoping for something a little bit more...exciting, or fulfilling?  Like eating a meal at Applebees.  It's good and all, but, you've had better.  Vegas and the dam were like that.  Good, better than working, but not as satisfying as one would like.  Neither place was what I could call transcendent.

I've never understood the appeal of the desert.  We live less than an hour's drive over the mountains from the desert, and many of our friends and neighbors take weekend trips to camp and play there.  Not to mention the people who live there.  I understand that even less. John Steinbeck wrote that the desert is a "mysterious wasteland, a sun punished place". I prefer the woods of Mississippi, the creeks and lakes of Texas, or the mountains and ocean around us in California.  But during the long drives through the desert, I was surprised by the beauty of it.  Steinbeck continues however,  "..in the war of sun and dryness against living things, life has secrets of survival...the desert..might well be the last stand of life against unlife".  The sage and Joshua Trees, scrub brush and wild flowers surviving against the odds.  Every action taken is done so to preserve life.  It's not as peaceful as the Sequoia's nor beautiful as the pine forests to be sure.  But one has to appreciate the desert for it's life.  Not only that but for the sheer size of it.  Flat beds of lakes long ago dried up that stretch for miles, only broken by random rocky outcroppings and the distant sun scarred hills on the horizon.  It all serves to make one feel rather small and insignificant; how molecular we are in the grand scheme of the universe.  Those dusty hills that were there long before I arrived, and will still stand long after I'm gone, took no notice of my passing through.

Finally, we arrived at the Grand Canyon.  I had mentally prepared myself to be underwhelmed.  But honestly, nothing could have prepared for me for the scale, beauty and grandeur that I encountered.  No hype, picture or written description could come close to the reality.  We took over 430 photos on the trip.  420 of which were taken at the Grand Canyon.  Everywhere you turn, a shadow casts colors upon the rocks, revealing or concealing what is inside and below.  The wide Colorado River appears to be a string laid out at the bottom on the canyon.  And the sheer scale of it all is mind boggling.

As we sat at the western-most spot of the southern rim to watch the sun gracefully set over the canyon., I couldn't help but remember the words to the great old hymn How Great Thou Art;

O Lord my God,

When I in awesome wonder

Consider all the works Thy Hand hath made,

I see the stars,

I hear the mighty thunder,

Thy pow'r throughout the universe displayed;

When through the woods

And forest glades I wander

I hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees;

When I look down from lofty mountain grandeur

And hear the brook,

And feel the gentle breeze;

Then sings my soul,

My Saviour God, to Thee,

How great Thou art!

How great Thou art!

I was even so inspired to wake up the next morning and hike in the dark to a recommended spot and watch the sun reappear.  Very out of character for me, I know.  But the scale and beauty and awe of the scene made me want to see all I could before we returned home. 

And that's when I realized I had learned a lesson that I should have known all along.  Maybe I did know it and had forgotten, but was reminded again of the simple formula:

GOD MADE > MAN MADE

Simple. Our soul longs for something bigger, for complete satisfaction.  Humans can make some cool things.  Humans can stop rivers and make the desert bloom and create a version of foreign lands, and endless entertainment, but they lack what God put in his creation; His transcendence.  The peace that comes from knowing that I might be small to the desert, but no matter how insignificant I feel, God remembers my name.  The beauty of his creation reflects his nature, and in nature we can experience him, and know him more. 

Vegas was good.  The Hoover Dam was good.  But the Canyon, and the desert and the family I was with - all things He made - were Grand.  Satisfying.  Fulfilling.