The older I get, the more I wish I would have paid attention to the naturalist writers of America’s 19th century 35 years ago in Mr. Hassler’s literature classes.

Oh, Mr. Hassler did his best to grab the attention of a teenage boy’s mind, but unfortunately I was not mature enough to know that Thoreau, Whitman and Emerson actually were better writers than Tom Keifer, the lead man of the hair band Cinderella.

Middle aged now, though, and learning to look for God in places that aren’t man made, I’m coming around to what the naturalist writers of two centuries already knew.

Friends, God is … out there.

Despite our best attempts to box up God in beautiful brick and mortar structures — literally, figuratively and theologically — we’d do well to recalibrate a bit where we look for The Creator.

For the first time this year, last week we escaped to the little northern Minnesota lake that has been my spiritual home for three decades now. It’s been busy for our family this spring, and escaping to the great north woods just wasn’t in the cards until then.

But it finally happened just as June is coming to a close. … Wait, summer is a third over already? Cipes, almighty.

Worn down from another lightning speed week that passed, I managed to plunk my backside in my favorite camping chair in about eight inches of pristine wilderness lake water with a book in one hand and deliciously tart IPA in the other in time to catch the last couple of hours of sunset.

As I turned each page of the entertaining bestseller that weaved a story about another heroic interstellar effort to save earth from apocalyptic doom — Guess what? We did it! Go science smarty pantses! — the powerful orb that warms us began its slow descent behind the towering pines that crowd the western edge of the lake.

Thankfully, though, I had the good sense to close the book and gaze west just as the horizon exploded into a Van Gogh-esque mosaic of yellows, oranges, blood reds and even violet.

And, just as we reached the point of the sun dropping behind the horizon, one of the lake’s mated loons cried (mournfully? joyfully?) to its partner at the far end of the lake, the sound reverberated exquisitely for a few glorious seconds atop the glasslike water.

Next, as if on cue, the resident neighborhood beaver silently swam by, mostly underwater but for his backside sticking above the water line, not more than 15 feet from me, on his evening ritual of heading to his den on the lake’s east end.

Sorry, Mr. Hassler. … If I had paid more attention in high school, I would have learned long ago, that try as we may, we’re never going to produce that kind of holy moment in any of our manmade structures. Amen.

Devlyn Brooks is the CEO of Churches United in Moorhead, Minn., and an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America serving Faith Lutheran Church in Wolverton, Minn. He blogs about faith at findingfaithin.com, and can be reached at devlynbrooks@gmail.com.