I can’t say I’ve ever had an experience where God has woken me to give me opportunity to just sit with him. But I have certainly experienced how being in nature and considering God in it has been worship for me.

When I was a young adult, stumbling my way along a path I was cutting for myself while gradually walking away from the path God had for me, I went on a business trip to the border of northern Italy and southern Switzerland. To get to the town where we were to stay we had to use a train. I still remember emerging from a tunnel and seeing these huge formations of rock rising above me, their magnitude so surprising. Despite the fact I had probably rarely thought of God recently, their size caused me to consider how big he must be if the mountains were as big as I could see they were. I’d never seen nature like it, so massive and permanent and unchangeable. I was literally moved to tears. The experience didn’t end, however, because as the train wound down the valleys, so the mountains appeared to get larger and larger and I was unable to keep up with the superlatives needed to describe their impressiveness. Their very tops disappeared as I descended lower and lower.

God spoke to him about himself that day: he told me how infinite and strong he was. If I had been asleep or simply not looking out the window I might have missed it. I didn’t go the mountains to worship, but somehow my soul couldn’t stop from worshipping.

Have you ever had an experience in nature that caused you to worship God or understand some part of him in a different way?