Nature, Awe, Scale

Why do so many people - including myself - often feel God in nature far more strongly than we feel him in an organized worship service?

Does a sense of scale contribute?

When I walk in nature, I come across a tree, far bigger than me.

His shaggy arms, reaching up to the sky, in quest of sunlight, draw my eyes upward.

Above him, far above him, is the blue, which instinctively feels like a ceiling or a lid - though I know it is not.

And there, in the lid, is the yellow sun - which my brain in science tells me is far, far away.

This ignites a chain of scale: me, to the tree, to the sky, to the sun. It is the witness of nature that tells me things are bigger than me.

And at the same time, here is the wind, moving clouds through the sky, rippling the leaves on the trees, blowing around me, and I am breathing it in.

The things that are bigger than me, and the things I can feel but can’t touch–these are all nature’s witness, and they call out to the unseen and the immense. Is it any wonder that we intuitively connect to the numinous, the mysterious, in a way that we do nowhere else?

It would be hard for a church in a building to activate this “nature” sense of scale. Yet people who come to church often say “they felt the presence” or something similar. What is activating that sense of awe?