Previously, I wrote about our pursuit of the American Dream, its pros and cons, and how most view it as improving yourself economically, owning your own home, building a retirement nest-egg, etc. But, perhaps the most compelling symbol for those who’ve achieved the American Dream is embodied in just two letters: RV.

Many people want to pay off their mortgage or have a nice retirement so they can do one thing: have the freedom to purchase a Recreational Vehicle and hit the road. My parents did just this a while back, spending five years traveling the country, working at different camps, enjoying the good life. My wife and I have often whispered of selling all we own, buying an RV, and heading out into the unknown.

RV life is an adventure. You get to trade your ordinary, predictable world for a life of scenic beauty and imagination. The road is always before you. There is newness and variety to the people you meet, the places you see, the potential to start anew with each new day. The very word recreational speaks of a life of refreshment and joy; you just need a vehicle to get you there.

It occurs to me that you and I are recreational vehicles. Or at least we can be if we change our focus a bit and see ourselves with different eyes.

Did you realize that God’s conspicuous activity throughout most of temporal, human history hasn’t been so much creative as it has been re-creational? In other words, of the hundreds of chapters in the biblical story, only the first few pages directly narrate God’s activity as Creator (despite retrospective allusions elsewhere).

From the time He “formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,” the rest of God’s story, and ours, largely involves recreation–transforming ordinary, profane, fallen “material” into something sanctified and glorious.

My own story is certainly a microcosm of this recreational endeavor. Through God’s breath into my dusty form, strength and reconciliation have arisen from a life of weakness and brokenness; relational passion, intimacy, and purity have been recreated from a past of rejection, distance, and misplaced desire. He continues my metamorphosis still and will continue it for his own glory.

I often tell people who bemoan the fact that they have never experienced the miracles of old–the parting of the Red Sea, sight to the blind, the dead rising from the grave–that they are ignoring the miracles that occur every day right under our noses:

Have you ever witnessed someone’s character transformed from a life of selfishness into a life of service to others? Perhaps a sexually-abused girl who now brings spiritual healing to those with a similar past? Have you ever seen a lifeless marriage that somehow rediscovers love, forgiveness, and intimacy? If you claim these kind of events aren’t miracles, you must be living in denial.

It is wise to note, however, that most miracles only appear supernatural to us. Really, they simply involve the Creator, transforming, recreating that which already exists though it is at first unseen by our human eyes. Abraham was given the ability to have a child decades beyond what was considered natural because he trusted in the God who “gives life to the dead and calls the things that are not, the things that are.”

Do you spend your days in drudgery and meaninglessness, pining away for a future when you might have the freedom to enjoy what is good? Do you see only how ordinary, how profane, how fallen you are, only a world of darkness, suffering, and brokenness? It is naive to deny that such realities exist. But, if you simply change your direction and your focus, there is a light that can transform who you are and what you see.

To be a recreational vehicle is about focusing on the unseen road before you, always driving yourself toward this faithful Creator who knows the end from the beginning, this God who can give you a new heart and a new spirit, who calls the things we believe are not, the things that are.

Don’t wait for retirement to step out on such a glorious adventure. You have only to turn around to leave the darkness behind you. The sunrise awaits.

There are certain works of art that have a lifetime impact on you. At least for me. They literally shape who you are. Reading Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Madeline L’Engle as a kid could qualify. Reading Plato in high school was significant for me (if that qualifies as art). One of the most epic encounters with a work of art occurred for me back in 1986, in my freshman year as an undergrad. I was taking a class on “aesthetics,” which refers to the principles of beauty. But the focus of the class was really the philosophy of art. This class had a far greater impact on me than most in my undergrad years, but on top of that, there was this one musical composition in that class that will be with me forever.

My zealous professor stands before us one day and says he’s going to let us experience the power of variation, the power of musical narrative. He takes this vinyl album from its sleeve (remember those?) places it on his record player, and I heard for the first time Felix Mendelssohn’s “Hebrides Overture,” or as it is also known, “Fingal’s Cave.”

To understand this music, you must first understand its inspiration. It was 1829, and Mendelssohn was with a friend touring by boat the Scottish Islands known as the Hebrides. The British Isles are often stormy, and this day was no exception. People aboard the paddle steamer were vomiting left and right, including Mendelssohn himself. But the main attraction of this tour was Fingal’s Cave, and despite the storm, he and his friend got into a much smaller boat to enter and explore it.

Fingal’s Cave is a 227-foot basalt sea cavern on the Hebrides island of Staffa. This sea cave has a color and geological symmetry unmatched in any other natural phenomena. Sir Walter Scott described it as, “one of the most extraordinary places I ever beheld. It exceeded, in my mind, every description I had heard of it–composed entirely of basaltic pillars as high as the roof of a cathedral, and running deep into the rock, eternally swept by a deep and swelling sea, and paved, as it were, with ruddy marble–it baffles all description.”

This is the natural wonder Mendelssohn, sick as a dog, entered with his little boat on that stormy day. And, amidst the visual wonder, he also experienced the wonder of its sounds. The acoustics of this cathedral with the violent waves crashing up and down and in and out of the cavern were, as Scott found, beyond logical description. But, as sick as he was, and as terrified as he was, Mendelssohn was able to describe it–in music.

So, here am I, hearing my professor tell me this tale, and then I heard the notes of Mendelssohn’s musical description. The orchestral strings were at once ominous, relentless, and later soared into the echo of seagulls. The force of the orchestra rose and fell like a wave, rolling, fierce, reaching a terrifying height, then at once subsiding into a deep calm. The incessant crescendo and decrescendo were beyond marvelous. Then, there was a still in the waters. And finally, it ended with a musical climax I have never heard duplicated. I was fully immersed by the wonder of it all. I was exhausted. I was in that little boat myself, carried by the power of nature, left for dead by its terrible beauty.

In the hindsight of years of Scriptural study, the metaphor for God and his sovereign power in nature have not been lost on me through that aesthetic experience. One thinker we studied in that class was Edmund Burke. He spoke about an experience in nature, like standing before a vast mountain range, where you encounter something so simultaneously beautiful and yet so beyond you that you are left in complete astonishment and awe. Burke said that “the passion caused by the great and sublime in nature is astonishment; and astonishment is that state of the soul in which all its motions are suspended with some degree of horror. In this case the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot entertain any other.” You are so overwhelmed that you literally feel a dread for your own existence, but so exhilarated that you are also fully alive, and your focus can find no other object to behold.

This is the experience I want to have with our Almighty God. In nature. In art. In prayer. In worship. He should terrify me with his beauty, with his utter glory. I should be transfixed by his omnipresent love, in awe of his sublime power. Since experiencing that one work of art, I now see God in nature in a profound, new way. And, if I’m lucky, I hope to further experience (and by God’s grace, produce) works of art that, like Mendelssohn’s, carry me beyond my visceral sense of self into the presence of this Almighty Creator.

(Note: if you want to hear the piece for yourself, it’s out there for only 99 cents. I couldn’t find a decent rendition on Itunes that wasn’t attached to a whole album, but I did find a few on Rhapsody, and I’m sure it’s to be found elsewhere. The full title is “The Hebrides Overture, ‘Fingal’s Cave’ Op. 26″ by Felix Mendelssohn.)