How big, how blue, how beautiful
We recently returned from a road trip to Phoenix, Tucson, Monument Valley, and Arches National Park.* While we were in those incredibly beautiful places, our daughter texted us this photo she took while in Key West with friends. I immediately thought, “How big, how blue, how beautiful,” from the Florence+The Machine song of the same name. Our daughter is a huge fan, which is why I am familiar with some of Florence’s songs.
I thought of that phrase—How big, how blue, how beautiful—many times on our road trip. Looking at the unique-color-of-blue skies in Utah with big, bright, white piled-up clouds, the huge expanse of land stretching to the horizon, the multi-colored, multi-shaped red rocks, that song played on repeat in my mind. How big, how blue, how beautiful! Blue became a metaphor for overwhelming beauty. Even when looking at red rocks, my mind sang, “How big, how blue, how beau-ti-ful!” The building crescendo at the end felt like a musical expression of the grandeur of what I was seeing.
God’s greatness reverberates in the bigness, the blueness, and the beauty. Oh God, how big, how blue, how beautiful you are! His love is big, blue, and beautiful. I pray that you feel his big, blue, beautiful love.
Yet, sometimes we feel his love like a soft whisper. As I wrote this, I thought of the “still, small voice” in the story of Elijah, a prophet of God in the Old Testament.
Then God said [to Elijah], “Go out, and stand on the mountain before the Lord.”
And behold, the Lord passed by,
and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the Lord,
but the Lord was not in the wind;
and after the wind an earthquake,
but the Lord was not in the earthquake;
and after the earthquake a fire,
but the Lord was not in the fire;
and after the fire a still small voice.
(I Kings 19:11-12, New King James Version)
God was in the small voice, not the big wind, earthquake, and fire. In my travels, I saw God in the majesty and grandeur of the landscape, the big expanses of land and sky. God was there. He is also in the small places, the small voice that whispers to us.
God’s love is not small. It is huge, immense, bigger than we can imagine. Yet we find him—his love, his voice—in places, voices, people, and creatures both big and small. May you feel God’s big, blue, beautiful love in your heart, and see him in all things—big and small.
*I often blog our travels. If you’d like to read my road trip travel blog, it is here: https://www.mavismoon.com/blog/tag/Michigan-Tucson-Utah-2026.
