Deep calls to deep at the sound of Your waterfalls ...

His awesome splendour spoke loudly through the might of the tonnes of rushing water.  His strength was so palpable to me that I wanted to climb into it.  My tears of awe merged with the gushing spray of the falls as they poured down my cheeks and it took my all not to fall to my knees as I stood on the Maid of the Mist before what I imagined to be a living representation of the King of Kings & Lord of Lords.

This was the first time that I was visiting waterfalls of this size.  There are so many firsts in life.  From birth to whatever stage you might be at now firsts come and, sadly for most of them, they go.  But this first - the first time that I was experiencing the Niagara Falls – was, for me, nature at its loudest.  Different to the sound of the raging winds on a stormy sea or the crash of the waves in a tempest or the wail of gusting winds.  Yet still without a word being said the sound of the Falls answered any question I had as to the awesomeness that is God.  Dramatic.  Eternal.  Everlasting.  Loud.  Spectacular.  Living Water.  Deep calling to deep.   Silently the adjectives flowed through my mind and made their way past my lips.  People were all around me on this tourist experience from the Canadian side of the joint US/Canada border, yet it was as if I was alone before Him.  This must be a teeny tiny snippet of what standing before the proverbial Pearly Gates will be like.  Except it will be the Lord Himself ushering me in.  It was a profound moment for me and one that I will cherish for always.

As a child I read voraciously.  I remember encyclopedias on our bookstand.  15 of them.  Dark green & off-white with gold edges on the pages.  The World Book Encyclopedias.  Book 5 was People & Places and I could often be found reading it from cover to cover, over and over again.  I remember reading about the Maid of the Mist and the Niagara Falls.  Never whilst turning those pages as a child did I think that I would board one in order to view the other.   I had always thought that the boat would no longer be in operation when I grew up.

This is why those tears flowed that afternoon in Canada; God granting me the desire of my heart was so very true and so very real, I hadn’t even realised it until that moment.  Because as I had turned those pages and read about all those places like the Niagara Falls, He knew that I would visit those Falls all those years later.  He knew that a lot of those places that I had read about and a lot of the photographs I had drunk in from that encyclopaedia would be visited and seen by me over the coming years.  It was mind boggling, yet I had almost taken it for granted.  A year before I was at this magnificent place, I was undergoing chemotherapy, questioning whether I would live or die. 

Yet here I stood.  Giving silent praise to my God of miracles.  Grateful that I could stand here.  Stand here and hear Him.  Hear Him in the sound of His waterfalls.