Driving home a couple days ago was so pretty…it was so clear
that I could see the mountains all the way past brush. The grasslands in the
foreground were goldenrod with a slight greenish tint. Then there was the
river, with it’s cottonwood bark standing a deep charcoal, the tips of the
branches showing a soft green cloud surrounding it. The hills in the background
were the same goldenrod as the foreground, but with the undertone of the warm
red soil that the bluffs are comprised of. The hills are rolling, so that the
view never stays the same, but at the same time never changes. It ripples as
you pass, almost like a sea of the land and grass. Its frozen in its movents,
only visible in the movent of the wind or the travel of a car. Behind you, the
mountains rise like a fortress, forboding to those who don’t know them, but
opening to welcome those who call her home. In between these lies the Front Range.
Open range gives way to neat crop circles, giving way to smaller hobby farms,
and finally feeding into the towns that lead to a metropolis. Men are rushing around, building, tearing
down, doing something. But the land,
the real land, never changes. Sure, the surface gets scratched and slightly
rearranged, but the land, the real land, it’s still there. No matter how man
tries to bend it to his will, he can never change it entirely. Massive, yet
unbelievalbly beautiful. Delicate, yet unmoveable. Bending to the change of the seasons, yet
resisting the intrusions on it’s surface.
There is something about land that is so precious. It is a
glimpse of eden, which in turn, is a glimpse of heaven. I really agree with the
quote from C.S. lewis in the book the last battle the unicorn says when
he sees the real narnia, “I am from here. The reason that we loved the old
Narnia so much is that it sometimes looked like this.” There really is
something about God’s creation that brings us closer to Him. It is a call to
home. The place we came from, and are returning here. We are just on loan here.
We long for our real home. Some of us look and look, missing what is right
before our eyes. Others of us don’t know what we are looking for. Others look
and look and can’t see what is right in front of them. But those of us who can
look at the world and see God’s hand in it, there is something special in it.
It’s an intangible something in the lift of the wind, the sparkle of a stream,
the swish of the wind in the dry august grass. It pulls us closer to God, the
little reminders that we are here for a purpose. To bring something to this
world that fills it with a spark that couldn’t occur without a piece of HIM.
The solid world is ringing with His Name, to those who have ears to hear and
eyes to see. But just as a fingerprint
is not the person, His work is not HIM. He entrusted us with a piece of
Himself-spread throughout the world.
He is so massive. One human would be overwhelmed by a
glimpse of Him. So he spread Himself out, gave each human a unique view of
Himself. Each was designed to have loves and desires that pull them uniquely to
the Creator through the part of Him that is ingrained into them. But together,
we can pull together a picture of who God is, in His hugeness. No one will ever
see Him exactly the same, but the basics will always be the same. It’s the
little things that we differ on in who we see God to be. How he speaks to us.
The way he brings each of us to Him. Exactly how we define the ‘gray’ areas in
our lives-the areas that could be wrong or right, depending on the person and
their experiences.
And this is God. Wanting to love us all and be loved by us.
Isn’t that an awesome thought? That the Creator of the universe, and the
mastermind of the molecular structure of our bodies, would wait for us. And not
just wait, but actively pursue us in ways that don’t overwhelm us.
“And this
is love, that a man lay down his life for a friend.”
