Thanks to cashing in on my husband’s frequent flyer miles, my family just returned from a trip to Iceland. Although my husband and I have wanted to go there for two decades, the entire trip was planned and executed within a few short weeks. We are already wondering when we could make it back for a summer visit.

In a world which teeter totters between scientific pragmatism and truth’s relativity, I am thankful to have been able to experience a country which only increased my wonder and amazement at God’s power, fierceness and wild creativity. If we ever question the magic of existence, if we are ever tempted to think the world is humdrum, and long for the excitement of fantasy, we only have to throw a glance at the diversity and frightening beauty the creation reveals to us.

Who is this God who formed land, then caused it to catch fire and explode? In a country where it may be difficult to determine if the people are speaking imaginatively or not when they talk of trolls and elves, God’s breath and thumbprint, his intensity and love are in each stream and waterfall, in each wild horse and threatening mountain.

But so are they in my everyday life: in the turn into my neighborhood, in the willow tree in my backyard, in the monotonous routine of cooking rice, in teaching inequalities and diagramming sentences, and driving my kids to classes.

There is a beauty in the faces I see in my daily life, in the encounters of diversity, and in the souls I meet in my church family. I could only marvel at the geysers, and cliffs and freezing, roaring waters, because every day I see both the fierceness and quiet creativity of God as Creator working through us.