Eleven to fourteen million people visit Niagara Falls every year, and they come from all over the world. I would venture to guess that people from almost every nation have made the trip to those stoney shores just to stare at them. They take pictures of this colossal dumping of water and stand transfixed for hours at the sight. And these aren’t the only falls people flock to see. Yosemite is famous for its iconic columns of falling water, as well as Venezuela for its Angel Falls, and the list goes on and on. We love waterfalls. What is our fascination with them? I believe they are visual referents to our invisible Creator.
If you’ve been to Niagara Falls, you’ve noticed that the deafening roar and sheer size of them are at once both humbling and oddly calming, that there is something soothing about gazing on them? It strikes me that these are not learned responses, or particular to a specific culture, gender or age group. It’s simply how they make us feel. In some ways it’s sensory overload. Our minds simply can’t process all that’s going on every second. We may focus for a moment on some isolated portion of the cascade, but it’s soon lost in the rest of the falling wall, and our minds stagger to consider the seemingly endlessness of it all. It’s like being exposed to eternity.
Waterfalls are powerful, roaring and majestic and at the same time the epitome of humility. Water always seeks the lowest places. As the water leaves the lofty heights above, hardly a sound is made. It’s only as it reaches the bottom that the source of the roar is discovered. If we could remove the rocky river bed from the bottom of Niagara the sound would most surely diminish to the point of comparative silence. But it is the crash at the bottom, with all its mist and foam that state the power. And it is the power of massive humility.
In Jonathan Edwards’ sermon, “The Excellency of Christ” he refers to the “admirable conjunction of diverse excellencies” which are found in Christ. I’ve been captivated by that phrase since I first read it, and I think it is precisely what we encounter in waterfalls. I think it’s what stills our souls, calms us and makes us feel so small.
Edwards writes, “There do meet in Jesus Christ infinite highness and infinite condescension.” That sense of the never ending power of the waterfall, coupled with the manifest display of abasement images forth our King as few things can. Edwards continues, “He is higher than the heavens, and higher than the highest angels of heaven. So great is he, that all men, all kings and princes, are as worms of the dust before him. All nations are as the drop of the bucket, and the light dust of the balance, yea, and angels themselves are as nothing before him. He is so high, that he is infinitely above any need of us, above our reach that we cannot be profitable to him, and above our conceptions that we cannot comprehend him.”
This is similar to that sense of the eternal we get while standing before the unending curtain of tumbling water. We feel dwarfed by its power. We instinctively recognize its absolute indifference to us. It couldn’t care less whether we watched or not, and that very thing commands our attention. Perhaps we unconsciously imagine going over the edge and plunging to the bottom, and realize the waterfall would not distinguish us from a piece of driftwood. That sense of not being the center of the universe confronts us there.
But Edwards writes further, “And yet he is one of infinite condescension. None are so low or inferior, but Christ’s condescension is sufficient to take a gracious notice of them. He condescends not only to the angels, humbling himself to behold the things that are done in heaven, but he also condescends to such poor creatures as men, and that not only so as to take notice of princes and great men, but of those that are of meanest rank and degree, “the poor of the world.”’”
This too we feel in the presence of the waterfall. Its power is displayed in its decent. We recognize its strength is a pure and cleansing force. And no sooner has it exploded on the rocks below than it flows away in the silent swirls of gentle currents. What hiker, standing at the waterfall’s base, has
Could this not be the reason for the waterfall’s magnetic appeal? That our Savior, “who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.” (Phil. 2:6-8)
Perhaps it is this “conjunction of diverse excellencies”, the eternal power and infinite humility of our God we see in metaphor as we behold the waterfall that resonates with us? Being made in the image of our God, we feel the loveliness of this powerful humility displayed in the waterfall. Oh, may this mighty condescension humble us, direct our minds away from ourselves and captivate us with our great God!
If you’d like to read Jonathan Edwards’ full sermon entitled “The Excellency of Christ”, click on the sermon title to be taken there.
