I spent the last few days driving through Northern Idaho and Western Montana…a mountainous region in the northwest corner of the United States. This area is rugged and beautiful…full of jagged peaks, rugged terrain and an array of wildlife. The Beartooth Plateau has exposed rock that dates to 3.3 billion years ago, and the Missoula Valley is composed of sediment from a 12,000 year old mammoth lake that covered most of the northern portion of Montana. This particular lake was formed by an ice dam that eventually weakened and broke, letting loose a volume of water comparable to that found in modern Lake Ontario…which followed the path of least resistance through Idaho, Washington and Oregon. It was the largest flood of known geologic history. It must have been devastating to the people living in the region. From the air, you can see the ripples left in the ground after the flood passed through Eastern Washington. From the ground, they are part of the landscape: rolling hills dotted with farms and covered with crops and grasslands.
I took away a sense of scale…and of beauty. In the midst of the raw savagery and brilliance of the created world, one can only admit powerlessness. We are so incredibly small…yet called to faith that moves mountains. Try contemplating this while standing next to an actual mountain. Christ must have, spending as much time as he did in solitude at higher altitude. Honestly, what it comes down to is this: I have nothing. This whole journey is too magnificent and wild to tame…yet, we try and try to define and control it…to wrap up the Christian journey into a neat package we can easily manipulate. If we think we’ve got it figured out, our challenge is to go stand at the base of a 5,000 foot mass of solid basalt and pray it away…just a few inches away will do.
And yet…
Before the mountains were born
or you brought forth the earth and the world,
from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
God is God. Creation speaks wonderfully of His nature. God’s nature as expressed in Nature is not tame, not safe…but good. Very good, in fact. I think there’s a reason that solitude taken in the outdoors touches the soul deeper than even the most profound quiet moments in our created homes and churches. Being out in the midst of Creation, in the presence of God’s creative expression of Himself, of His nature…being there ensures we remember who we are…where we stand…who we stand before. Let’s follow Christ away from the crowds, up to that place, to the mountainside…into the presence of the One who makes the heavens shout and the mountains burst into song.
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