When I had my landscape design business, I was blessed to be living on a limestone bluff overlooking a vast expanse of the Texas Hill Country. The view out my bedroom window traveled across miles of blue rolling hills and didn’t stop until it came to the sunset. My five acres of undeveloped wildland was studded with Texas Red Oaks, Mexican Plums, Gum Bumelia, Blackfoot Daisies, and Blue Stem grasses. Regular visitors included brown turkeys, roadrunners, rattlesnakes, deer, buzzards, armadillos, and these crazy-huge black-and-red centipedes that looked like fake rubber fishing lures.
When I first moved there years before, this part of Texas had been new to me. The property was a wonderland of amazing new plants, animals, birds, reptiles and insects. Whenever I looked across the landscape, all I saw was a wonderland of the strange and new, which seemed endless. It was like landing on another planet and being awed by a completely foreign world.
But in a few short years, the strange became familiar and I had become an enthusiastic specialist in native Texas landscaping and wildlife landscaping. This land was a great laboratory in which to hone my craft. One day as I was walking on the property making notes in my journal about what was blooming at that time, it suddenly occurred to me that I recognized every single plant I was looking at. Not only did I recognize every plant, I knew every botanical name and I knew how to propagate it. I also knew which plants provided food for which butterflies and which birds, what plants the deer wouldn’t eat, and which grasses provided seed for the field mice. A sudden rush of sadness came over me. While I enjoyed knowing all of these things, I also realized that the thrill of discovery had run its course. The mystery was gone.
Fortunately, the thrill of discovery never comes to an end when it comes to contemplation. Prayer is when we talk to God; but contemplation is when God talks to us. In contemplation, he reveals to us mysteries about himself and about this world and the world to come. Because it comes from him, we can’t make it happen. But we can invite him to speak. By finding a quiet place, free from distractions, and setting aside a stretch of time to sit and “listen”, we can invite him in to reveal a new mystery or two. For example, sometimes I read a little from Scripture or from one of my favorite spiritual writers. Sometimes I just sit and tell God what I’m wondering about. Sometimes I just remain interiorly silent but receptive. When he answers, he doesn’t use words, he simply imparts understanding. Those are the moments of breathtaking awe.
With God there are always new mysteries, new depths, new worlds to discover. The thrill of walking through the Wonderland of the Infinite and learning new things will never come to an end, in this life or the next. In fact, this will be one of our greatest joys in heaven.
Who of us knows what God knows? What knowledge can a finite mind hold in comparison to an infinite one? How true are these words of the Lord in his poetic soliloquy in the 38th chapter of Job:
“Then the LORD answered Job out of the storm and said…Where were you when I founded the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its size? Surely you know. Who stretched out the measuring line for it? Into what were its pedestals sunk, and who laid its cornerstone, while the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
Who shut within doors the sea, when it burst forth from the womb, when I made the clouds its garment and thick darkness its swaddling bands, when I set limits for it and fastened the bar of its door, and said: thus far shall you come but no farther, and here shall your proud waves stop?
Have you ever in your lifetime commanded the morning and shown the dawn its place…have you entered into the sources of the sea, or walked about on the bottom of the deep?
Have the gates of death been shown to you, or have you seen the gates of darkness?
Have you comprehended the breadth of the earth? Tell me, if you know it all.
What is the way to the dwelling of light, and darkness—where is its place, that you may take it to its territory and know the paths to its home? You know, because you were born then, and the number of your days is great!
Have you entered the storehouses of the snow, and seen the storehouses of the hail which I have reserved for times of distress, for a day of war and battle? What is the way to the parting of the winds, where the east wind spreads over the earth?
Who has laid out a channel for the downpour and a path for the thunderstorm to bring rain to uninhabited land, the unpeopled wilderness; to drench the desolate wasteland till the desert blooms with verdure? Has the rain a father? Who has begotten the drops of dew?...Can you raise your voice to the clouds, for them to cover you with a deluge of waters? Can you send forth the lightnings on their way…Who tilts the water jars of heaven so that the dust of earth is fused into a mass and its clods stick together?
Or in the words of St. Michael the Archangel, “Who is like unto God?”
Just beautiful.