Adoration

Ray Ortlund post:  The awakened capacity to adore

“Suddenly the Mole felt a great Awe fall upon him, an awe that turned his muscles to water, bowed his head, and rooted his feet to the ground.  It was no panic terror – indeed, he felt wonderfully at peace and happy. . . . ‘Rat!’ he found breath to whisper, shaking.  ‘Are you afraid?’  ‘Afraid?’ murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love.  ‘Afraid!  Of Him?  O, never, never!  And yet – and yet – O, Mole, I am afraid!’  Then the two animals, crouching to the earth, bowed their heads and did worship.”

Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows (New York, 1916), pages 180-182.  Italics his.

“Anyone who has experienced what Grahame describes carries in his bosom the embers of a precious fire, praying those embers will never, never be put out, valuing more than all earth’s treasures . . . the awakened capacity to adore.”

John White, The Golden Cow: Materialism in the Twentieth-Century Church (Downers Grove, 1979), pages 127-128.