Road to Fuller!
Texas is really beautiful.
It really is.
Living there most of my life I’d been unconvinced, but I got to see it today. I got to see it today with new eyes.
Have you ever done that? Have you ever rediscovered something ordinary, and realized how amazingly extraordinary it is?
Driving down I-10 for 571 miles towards the Texas/Mexico/New-Mexico border I realized this. I looked around as I listened to my “Man In the High Castle” (REALLY GOOD) audiobook, and was taken aback at the majesty of hills as large as mountains. The broken crags of rock offered a cross-section of minerals, like a rainbow the colors dazzled.
Everything had a size that was simply incomprehensible.
With the exception of the occasional trucker, the feeling of being alone with nature was a calming force for the soul.
I think so many of us forget what nature is, and what it means.
We say we care about nature, but I think that statement means different things for different people.
I am terrible about recycling at home. I’ll go out of my way to recycle when I’m not at home, but for some reason at home it’s too much work.
On the other hand, I almost never use plastic bags, or ANY bags when going to stores…unless I’m buying a comically substantial amount of marbles. You never know when you’ll need to re-enact a scene from Home Alone.
But one thing I do know, is that when I look at those mountains and those rolling plains, I see something holy. I see something that we probably aren’t even worthy to inhabit. The mountains, that look as though God had sculpted them by hand (Scientists, forgive my poeticism)…we just drive right by them. The plains, as far as the eye can see, we see only as the absence of development, and not the majesty of expanse.
I told several of my friends and family that I wanted to drive from Houston, TX to Pasadena, CA, and they couldn’t understand why. Obviously it’s a long drive, and that’s a reason I can understand. But the one I got that interested me the most was, “It’ll be so lonely.”
Lonely.
I’ve always found this concept interesting…especially as a Christian.
Being alone typically is defined as a negative word, it’s a word by subtraction. ”Having no one else present” (Oxford Dict.)
We seek community, but we are afraid of solitude. Is it even possible to maintain that, to only be surrounded by people?
As I drive through my mountains, I realize that I am not alone, God is in these mountains. From every cliff and boulder, to the valleys in between, God is there.
So tomorrow as I leave Texas and head towards New Mexico and Arizona, I will never forget that I am not alone.
I have a God that loves me.
…so much so that we have this world as a reminder of the power of the one who loves.
Praise God!
Amen.