The winding drive through the redwoods of the Santa Cruz mountains hypnotized us into an awe-filled silence.

On a whim, Jake and I decided to take the scenic highway 9, as our friend Becca recommended, to Santa Cruz. From the first drop of tea, the Saturday morning had been a blissfully lazy one; why wrestle with the rhythm? Without even a glimpse of the emerald odyssey awaiting us, we quickly grew satisfied with our decision to go the roundabout route as we jaunted through Campbell’s quaint woodsy neighbor called Saratoga.

With folksy music harmonizing as we glided into the redwood forest, we unconsciously stopped chatting; there was enough to take in and mull over without speaking. The stillness of our surroundings tantalized us into silence.

Towering redwoods shot up into the greyish mist of the cloud Red Rocket (as we affectionately call my hatchback) sliced through. It was as if we were surfing on the fuzzy line between the clouds and the ground — something like the threshold between heaven and earth.

The mist was enough to unleash the windshield wipers, but not enough to paint an opaque horizon; redwoods seemed to reign for miles past the mountainside. Because of the extreme curves of the road, my eyes got to feast on a vibrant rainbow for but a few seconds before Red Rocket made a 180 on the mountainside.

After we descended from the peak, little towns popped up along the scarcely populated highway 9. With towns came telephone poles. The telephone poles were toothpicks in comparison to the redwoods; each proud, yet humble, tree stood at least three times as tall as each telephone pole. Side by side, the might of the redwoods stood uncontested.

The telephone poles could not be made without the wood from the trees; cities could not be built without raw materials from nature. The coffee that I am enjoying this moment, on this Tuesday morning as I reminisce, is from the earth.

Perhaps while in cities, humans’ proudest, most elaborate domain, we tend to wonder at humans’ ingenuity. Alternatively, while in virtually untouched nature, an awe at something greater tends to reverberate through us.

Herein lies majestic truth: the might of humans does not compare to the might of God. In the midst of such arresting beauty our hearts become quiet, consciously or unconsciously thumping to the beat of:

“The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world and all who live in it, for he founded it on the seas and established it on the waters” (Psalm 24:1-2).

May this awe ignite wonder, and wonder spark seeking, and seeking set your heart on fire for God, the creator of all the earth and you and me and the longing in us for something more than what we see.