Driving through rugged mountains, your attention is focused on the narrow, steep, winding road - lest you miss a turn somewhere and plunge over some awful precipice.

Then, finding a wide place, you pull off, get out of your car, walk around a bit, and look at the majestic mountains you are passing through. How unutterably thrilling is the panorama that opens up before you as you look!

Half an hour later, after taking some pictures and breathing in the vastness and beauty of those mountains, as you get into your car, one of your party says, "I'm so glad we stopped; if we hadn't we would never have seen the wonder of what is all around us here."

Here we are this morning, you and I; here we have paused in the worship of God. During past days, in the ventures of our living, we have traveled our own steep and winding trails. But here we stop to see where we are, to view the landscape through which we are passing, to breathe in the majesty of this circumstance in which our life is lived.

In part, this is what worship is: seeing what otherwise we would miss, getting our eyes for a little while off the perilous places at our feet, and having a good, long look at the larger scene, the wider scope, the greater sweep of all that is around us - to take in the grandeur, to feel the upward urge, the immensity of it all - to know that the God in whom we live is great, that love is boundless, that life has somewhere to go and room for growing.

As you go from our wayside pause today, I hope you can say, "I'm glad we stopped."