BIG

When viewing the awe-inspiring beauty and overwhelming size and depth of The Grand Canyon, one cannot help but be moved. Many an adjective has been wasted to try and describe the indescribable – immense, vast, magnificent, spectacular, enormous, etc. – but the adjectives are too common to explain something so unique. No matter how many ways people have tried to explain what makes The Grand Canyon so . . . , well, . . . grand, they all fall short because it must be experienced to be understood.

Not that people don’t keep trying. I was experiencing The Canyon from an overlook near the South Rim when the sound of heavy footsteps thundered up from the parking lot. A father had raced ahead of his family to the overlook, and was so overcome with emotion that when he finally caught his breath and stood face-to-face with the most majestic, most breath-takingly gorgeous panorama ever experienced, he yelled back to the family, “Holy cow!! You guys gotta see this thing!! . . . .Oh . . . . Oh, man . . . . Holy cow!! . . . . Wow . . . . Hey, hurry up, guys! . . . . Mmmmm . . . . . Wow . . . . ”

. . . which is just about how eloquent I sound when trying to describe the experience of having Jesus in my life. Unfortunately, I don’t do it often enough, and I do not verbalize it very well on the fly. I suspect that many people have the same problem. Otherwise, we would probably hear a lot more Christian equivalents for “Holy cow!!” during our everyday lives. Despite all the adjectives and descriptions, it seems tough to tell someone about just how much Jesus loves them, and expect them to grasp it after just hearing the words we speak.

Thankfully, though, we do not have to rely on words alone to get the message across. In fact, telling someone about Jesus is probably only a small part of letting them experience His love. How we live, what we talk about, what we laugh at, and how we treat people all demonstrate what we believe in so others can begin to experience Christ’s love for themselves. Only with that experience, coupled with the words we speak, will people be able “to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ” (Ephesians 3:18b).

And holy cow, is it big.

Real big.