I remember it was near midnight in Jasper, Alberta, and the whole town seemed to be awake. Every staff member from the hotel, locals and guests alike, were out because the sky was doing something astonishing.

I had hoped I might see the Northern Lights when I chose to spend a summer working in the Canadian Rockies. But I never imagined this.

It was a full-scale light show, lasting for hours. We watched the lights dance from vibrant green to purple and blue and paint the whole sky. A local said he hadn’t seen anything like it in twenty years. (I even did a quick google search and found Facebook photos from the day—linked below).

After wandering with the crowd, I eventually found myself by the lake, sitting on a Muskoka chair. There were some others around but my attention was completely fixed on the sky.

The lights swerved and changed shape, and then rapidly, like a silk scarf unraveling, purple burst into vibrant pink and orange.

It was the most magnificent thing I’d ever seen. My eyes quite literally could not handle it. I felt them well with tears. The kind that come as a response to…too much beauty. 

Awe and "Fear"

I didn’t have language for it then, but I know now I was experiencing the awe of God.
It was pure reverence for creation.

It was what I believe is “the fear of God” the Bible so often talks about.

Not the afraid kind, where Adam runs away from God in the garden (that kind is always wrong, by the way). But the kind that confronts magnificence beyond comprehension and witnesses your smallness in comparison.

The kind where humility washes over you as you recognize how little you truly know, in the presence of something so much greater. 

And yet…The same magnificence—that created the northern lights, the mountains, the stars, the lakes, the perfectly detailed shells—

Created me.

The Soul's Greatest Desire

I didn’t know God then like I do today. I may never have opened a Bible or really gone to church.

But I knew reverence in that moment. I believe those tears were a soul response to my Maker even when I lacked the knowledge or understanding.

I believe every soul carries a yearning to worship the Creator, though our responses are all unique and different.

Many years later, I had a similar kind of awe in the days after giving birth to my son — moments where tears of stunned joy were my only way of speaking.

Finding Reverence in Him

That night in Jasper was nearly ten years ago.
This April I turn 32. One year ago on Easter, I was getting baptized. In the years between that night and today, my relationship with God has grown in ways I never expected.

And I’ve learned that reverence is accessible. Not just in a marvelous sky,
but in stories. In Scripture. In a person.

IN Jesus.

It might not happen as instantly as the northern lights, but over time, the Word does a work in you. It moves you from:

information → knowledge → revelation → reverence.

Lately, the book of John has been meeting me there most.

The Resurrection

In my Christmas reflection, I shared how the virgin birth was difficult for me to accept.
Now, writing this at Easter, the claim feels just as, if not more—incomprehensible.

Because it is an insane claim. That Jesus physically died and rose again.

And yet, the historical reality of His life is...equally insane. And hard to dismiss.

My whole understanding of the resurrection shifted when I listened to a Jewish forensic dentist explain why he came to believe in Jesus (linked under the blog).

As a forensic dentist, he was incredibly logically minded. His reasoning was simple:

Bodies go missing. They can be hidden for a long time.
But they don’t just disappear forever. Traces almost always surface.

Ten years later. One hundred years later. Sometimes even longer. But eventually… something is found.

A human body is actually very hard to completely get rid of. It is today, and definetely was 2,000 years ago, when no modern methods existed.

But nothing of Jesus's body was found, ever. 

And there was no lack of motive to search for it.

Leaders were threatened. The movement was growing fast. Producing a body would have been the single, most powerful way to shut it all down immediately.

Even Apostle Paul said,
“If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.” (1 Corinthians 15:14)

In other words, everything hinged on this.

So if a body existed… it would have mattered. A lot.

And yet… no trace of Jesus’s body was ever been found. 

Not then. Not later. Not now.

And at some point, you have to stop skimming past that and actually ask:

What explains that?

There’s no easy explanation for his vanishing body. Or, the hundreds of unexplainable miracles in Jesus’s life.

So when you really stop and think… maybe this is actually real?

It shifted everything for me. The stories came to life in a new way. That’s where awe and revelation met me in the scriptures. 

The Invitation

Faith is not about abandoning logic. It’s about looking at the evidence available while remaining open to what we cannot fully understand.

It takes humility to say, “Maybe I don’t understand this. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t an answer.”

And if you believe, what would it look like to live like you believe?
Would you invite the living God into your life to reveal who He knows you are?
Would you start to really choose to know this God?

Because the God who set the sky ablaze with the Northern Lights, who formed the mountains and the stars and everything we stand in Awe of…

wants a relationship with me.
And with you.

That is something to marvel at, every single day.

So instead of letting Easter pass by…

consider the invitation it holds.

To meet Him.
To know Him.
To actually let Him into your life.

Because the resurrection isn’t just something that happened to Jesus.

It’s an invitation into new life for us, too.

A life where we walk with God.

And that kind of life changes everything.

Love,
Natalie Grace

Mentioned links

Alberta May 2017 Northern Lights

Jewish Forensic Dentist: Why He Believes