The cliff was high and blanketed in wildflowers. My ears had popped repeatedly as we drove up the coastal highway to get to this piece of land jutting out over the Pacific Ocean. Now I stood at the edge and watched the surf pound the rocky shore below with an upward salty spray. Toes at the very edge of the cliff, I closed my eyes and felt a marvelous, fearsome untethering from the ground. Spreading my arms wide, I was no obstacle to the wind coming off the Pacific. The sea continued its surging and receding. I stood in that moment and felt every pore on my skin. I noticed every breath. In, out. In, out. I was a tiny dot on a massive cliff at the edge of the world. I was utterly insignificant.

I had a lot of moments like that last week as I spent several days exploring the West Coast with my sister. We hiked up cliffs and down valleys and through forests. From circles of massive redwood trees to calla lilies growing wild in a tiny inlet by the beach to the rocky cliffs that led the way to nothing but miles of ocean, I wondered how things could grow so beautifully in obscurity. Sure, millions of people come to see these same sights, so it’s not really obscurity now, but it hasn’t always been so.

I remember the first time I saw Ruby Falls in eastern Tennessee and read about the accidental discovery of the waterfall. From Genesis 1 until 1928, the waterfall had joyfully thundered in the dark belly of a mountain for no one’s benefit but the glory of God. When a chemist drilled through the limestone to open up the mountain for tourism purposes in the late 1920’s, the waterfall was discovered and named for the chemist’s wife. For all of time up to that discovery, though, the falls had stayed a course known only by its Creator.

Before the California coastline was accessed by man, it existed in similar obscurity. I can’t imagine such views and vistas existing with no one to enjoy them, yet they stood silent and untouched for a long time, known only by the God who spoke them into being. The vastness of the sea, the steep cuts of rock and ridges—how can something so beautiful exist without splintering into a million pieces? When I stood at the edge of a cliff in Big Sur and tried to capture the moment of wind and height and depth and sea, I said to my sister, “I want to capture this so I can recreate it later, but I know I can’t.”

We snapped photos uselessly. I kept breathing in the salty air, chilled by the Pacific in May. In, out. In, out. I wanted to swallow it all down, to wedge some portion of it into my body to call up at any moment. To pin it down in words with tangible edges. But I couldn’t. My memory would begin to fail me immediately. I was just a momentary bystander, a temporary partaker of joy. Somehow invited to witness it, but leaving it behind me. I absorbed the beauty of the created and marveled at its Creator. How can my life matter in light of such massive mountains and seas? I am a breath, a tiny sphere of molecules and emotions, a body that will be long outlived by cliffs and valleys. I felt my insignificance, and it was good.

Much later, I took off my shoes and socks and dusted a handful of sand from my feet, souvenirs from the day’s hikes along the beaches. He knows each grain and numbers them, I thought. How can anything matter to Him with so much cataloging? But my toes at the edge of the cliff do matter to Him. He created the earth for His glory, and glorify Him it does. Beautifully. Quietly. Anonymously. Majestically. While the surf pounds the sand and the wild flower blooms in the valley, Jesus holds it all together. No flower blooms part from His knowledge. No grains of sand are displaced by the tide without His consent. No cliff juts into the sea without His carving a space for it and putting it there. And somehow, two feet at the edge of a cliff and utter insignificance matter deeply to Him.

How could He do it? Create such glorious edges of continents, such fearsome heights and depths, such stretches of mountains and shores and yet still love us with a love that outdoes vistas and valleys? Creation just sings God’s praises, and He sustains it. We curse Him and worship ourselves, and He goes beyond mere sustenance. He loves us and rescues us. We are small and puffed up with our own little kingdoms and willfully ignorant to the world around us, yet He sent Jesus to sacrifice Himself in our place because we wouldn’t stop bowing down to the idols of self and pride and vainglory. I have more reason to praise Him than any mountain. I have more grounds for worship than the lilies blooming in the slip of valley by the sea. I have more incentive to wonder at His love than the dizzying heights of the jagged cliffs of the Pacific coastline.

It was good to step back from the magnified vista of my little life. It was good to step toward the edge of the cliff and feel my own insignificance. I am small yet full of pride and self-importance. But Christ died for me. And loves me. And is sloughing off the old to make room for the new. And giving me more reasons than all of the magnificent mountains and seas to praise Him.

And so I do. Praise Him for His love, His care, His delight in hiding waterfalls inside mountain caves, in drawing a ragged, rocky edge around the continents, in planting lilies in a small crevice between hills. Praise Him for His attention to tides and trees and you and me. On the last day of my travels, I sat in an airport terminal and flipped through the pictures on my phone. Tears welled up and leaked down my cheeks. What kind of God creates such things as man and mountains? Surely He is very, very great. 

For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods. In his hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. Oh come, let us worship and bow down let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker!
Psalm 95:3-6

I am a breath, a tiny sphere of molecules and emotions, a body that will be long outlived by cliffs and valleys. I felt my insignificance, and it was good. Share on X