Old Faithful

During my day-long visit to Yellowstone National Park, I was determined to see all the main sites I could visit. Because I arrived at the crack of dawn, I got the chance to do so long before the buses filled with mostly pasty-white tourists arrived with their hordes of children.  

If I sound a bit like a curmudgeon, it's because I am one, at least when it comes to buses filled with tourists and screaming kids who ignore the safety signs. 

But at long last, I found my way to Old Faithful, the famous geyser that erupts on a reasonably consistent schedule every 35-120 minutes.  The National Park Service can predict the eruption schedule within plus or minus ten minutes, which is remarkable. 

As fate would have it, I arrived soon after Old Faithful erupted, so I had a long wait.  

I took advantage of the time to visit the gift shop, scope out some hiking trails, refill my water bottles, and then find a good spot to view the event. 

The eruption began slowly at first.  Water began to bubble up and spill over the side of the geyser's crater, and the crowd started to "Oooooo!" and "Aaaaahhh!" only to be forced to wait a bit longer.  

When it finally erupted, water shot 90 feet into the air with a "Whooosh!" The crowd began to cheer, and hundreds of cell phones, including mine, came out to record the event. 

The crowd dissipated quickly as Old Faithful began to subside and go back on the clock for the next eruption.  I walked with them and listened to the chatter of the people around me. 

"Wasn't that cool?" a dad asked his teenage daughter.  "It was okay," she replied. 

"Check that off the list!" a guy in front of me told his girlfriend. "That was a long wait," she replied. 

As I continued to walk and listen, I sensed that most of us missed something important about what we had just witnessed.  

Seeing this incredible natural phenomenon, which has thrilled millions of people in years gone by, may have been anticlimactic for most people who came to see it that day.  

It wasn't all that miraculous to them.  

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I had the same tendencies and wondered if I had the chance to see Old Faithful again, if I wouldn't try harder to time it better so I didn't have to wait. 

Our culture has an immediacy that can't be ignored. We have become used to not having to wait. Our senses have become deadened to a certain extent to the incredible things that often happen right under our noses—miracles that should amaze us. 

So we live our lives thinking that miracles are only things that happened a long time ago, recorded by people who were too easily impressed. We feel a kind of superiority about this view as people who aren't easily entertained and are too wise to be fooled.  

What might be surprising is that even in ancient times, many people who witnessed the miraculous held the same view.  

Many of the Gospel accounts of Jesus' miracles also included statements about those who refused to believe what they had seen was miraculous.  Jesus often pointed this out, sometimes with a degree of sadness. 

Miracles are all around us, though. We can see them in Creation, experience them through incredible advances in Science and Technology, and find them in medicines that cure what used to be a death sentence. 

However, we have come to see these things through a jaundiced lens rather than clear-eyed and filled with wonder.  

We should take the time each day to pause and reflect on the miraculous nature of the world around us.  We should push back from our desire for immediacy and learn to wait and watch.  We should learn to see better, let the wonder of our world renew our souls, and find hope in all of it.

May we all learn what it means to practice this.  And may the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with us all, now and forever. Amen.