GRATITUDE AND AWE

(10/27/10)
(Site B53, Linville Falls Campground, Blue Ridge Parkway)

It’s about 9:30pm, and I think the rain has finally passed. A few moments ago as I walked to the restroom, I looked up through the holes torn in the thin blanket of low-lying fog that hung over the campground and saw what seemed like a million stars in a black cloudless sky. It was a sight that was particularly striking to me. We never see that many stars back in the Charlotte metro area. There, as in so many other highly-populated areas, a nightly burglary takes place in the skies above, as our society’s crass, noisy light robs us of a precious treasure – the stunning, delicate beauty of countless stars and galaxies stretched out to remind us just how small we really are. It is a sad depiction of much of our lives on this planet, as we allow the man-made and mundane to drown out the miraculous and majestic.

Tonight I finished reading “Leading With a Limp” by Dan Allender, PhD, who is president of Mars Hill Graduate School in Washington. This book is a thorough, insightful look at the advantages as a leader of acknowledging and even embracing one’s weaknesses. Throughout the book, Allender refers to different pairs of words – some of them contrasting, some of them co-related. I think I want to reflect on a few of them over the next few journal entries, beginning with Gratitude and Awe. Allender introduces the word pair this way:

What exactly does it mean to grow character? Character is grown to the degree that we love God and others. Love that is true and eternal begins with worship of the God who redeems people by his unexpected and unreasonable grace. We grow in character, then, to the degree we are captured by gratitude and awe. (1)

GRATITUDE
In essence, gratitude is the act of being thankful. It is the acknowledgment that someone has given you something or done something nice for you. Allender continues:

I know that every breath, each heartbeat is a gift. Not a single molecule of what I see is deserved or earned. The matchless gifts of my wife, of beauty, of the sun, land, water, and air that surround me make any presumption of ownership or entitlement completely laughable. All is a gift.” (2)

As I have been driving around up here in the mountains over the last few days, I can’t help but be grateful to you, God. Grateful that You created all of this beauty for us to enjoy. Grateful that I am still healthy enough to hike up and down these mountain trails. Grateful that I am wealthy enough to own a reliable SUV to drive up here (my Xterra, “Rex”). Grateful that You know me and hear me and see me and love me and call me to follow You.

Gratitude is recognition of YOUR GOODNESS.


AWE
Allender defines awe like this:

Awe is the capacity to bow in the presence of something or someone more glorious than ourselves. It is the proper posture of a creature before both the Creator and the Creator’s greatness as expressed through creation… We prostrate ourselves before greatness because we were built to admire and honor glory. (3)

Awe is my default response as I gaze at the beauty of these mountains. Awe is almost inescapable up here. On my way up here on Monday, I saw a double rainbow, one of which was perhaps the most brilliant I have ever seen. A few moments later, I saw a complete rainbow as I drove through the town of Linville Falls, NC. Yesterday, I stood at the rim of Linville Gorge and watched as fog rose from the trees and began to combine to form clouds. I have seen trees whose fall colors were so bright, they looked as if they had been set ablaze. And as I sat at my campsite picnic table this morning, I watched and listened as two tiny chipmunks gathered nuts in their cute little cheeks, taking occasional breaks to chatter and chase each other around and up and down the nearby trees. God, You are Creator of both huge and small. As my pastor, David Henderson puts it, “All of this was Your idea.”

Awe is recognition of YOUR GREATNESS.


While gratitude focuses on what You have done for me, awe focuses on what You have done, period. Both are correct responses to You, and both are necessary postures for us as followers of You and as leaders of others. And the absence of either can work to our detriment.

The absence of gratitude is entitlement – the feeling that I deserve or have earned something, and expect it from God. It is the act of exercising and pleading my “rights,” even though I laid all of them down at the cross when I became a follower of Christ. The absence of awe is complacency – the practice of moving through life without looking up; without acknowledging the miracles that we experience every day we live, no matter where we may live.

Gratitude and awe help to keep us both humble and God-focused, as we declare with our lips, heart, and lives that You are God and we are not… that we are finite and You are infinite. As simple and elementary as it may seem, we must always be mindful of one of the first prayers we learn as a child: “God is great… God is good.” Gratitude and awe enable us “to confess daily our desperate need for a greater wisdom and glory than we have today. We will one day apprehend God face to face; today we are given a gracious glimpse of his back. Each encounter with glory stirs a deeper desire for more. Therefore, we are called to be lifelong learners.” (4)

God, forgive me when the pace of my everyday life robs me of gratitude and awe. Help me to focus myself on You – Your goodness and Your greatness.


ENDNOTES:

1. Dan Allender, Leading With a Limp (Colorado Springs: Waterbrook Press, 2006), 144-145.
2. Allender, Leading With a Limp, 146.
3. Allender, Leading With a Limp, 147.
4. Allender, Leading With a Limp, 148.

STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS

(10/28/10)
(Rough Ridge, Tanawha Trail System, Blue Ridge Parkway)

It is a new day here in the beautiful North Carolina mountains. The rain is gone, and the sky is that lovely “Carolina blue” (as all the Tarheel fans love to boast), with a few puffy white cumulus clouds and wispy strokes of cirrus clouds brushed across the blue sky canvas. I have climbed to one of my favorite vantage points in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Rough Ridge, a series of rocky outcroppings emerging from the side of a steep slope near Grandfather Mountain. I am perched here on this rock high above the Blue Ridge Parkway enjoying the sun’s warmth on this chilly October day.

In this journal entry, I want to pick up where I left off yesterday, commenting on certain pairs of words that Dan Allender, PhD refers to in his book “Leading With a Limp.” Another word pair that he focuses on is Strength and Weakness. In the chapter about a leader's need to be a character and to grow character, he states:

To be a character requires gratitude for one’s uniquely carved being. Do we delight in the strengths that are fearfully crafted into our characters? Do we bless now these strengths wondrously serve others?... Our calling, however, is often shaped as much by our weaknesses as by our strengths. We tend to run with our strengths and avoid those people and tasks that expose our weaknesses. But the story of God is not a saga of human potential; it is the revelation of the kindness and passion of the Father who seeks and redeems sinners. Therefore our strengths may help us with certain tasks and opportunities, but it is our frailty and sin that make known the glory of God’s story. (1)

We all possess both strengths and weaknesses. Allender refers to us as “glorious ruins, bent glory.” (2) And we must believe that God intended it to be this way. But why? Why can’t we just have all strengths – equally skilled at everything? Well, first of all, that would be really boring! If I was good at everything, where would be the drive to improve, to better myself? If we were all strong in all areas, where would the need be for each other? That brings me to a second reason for strengths and weaknesses. I think that God wants us to depend on others… and on Him. He wants us to realize that we simply can’t do everything – we need each other to accomplish what he tasks us to do.

I am reminded here of Jesus’ reference to the body – how we are all different parts with different strengths and functions, all working together to accomplish a single task. For example, our eyes see an apple on the counter in the kitchen. Our brain confers with our stomach and decides that we want it. Our brain, multiple muscle groups, and the balance centers of our inner ear all work in harmony to get us up from the couch. Our legs convey us to the kitchen, our arm and fingers cooperate to grasp the apple, and our mouth takes a bite of it. I could go on, but the process gets a little messy from that point forward! You get the idea, though.

Since God creates us with predetermined strengths and weaknesses, does that excuse us to work solely in our areas of strength? While a privileged few may enjoy the luxury of doing that, most of us do not have that option. Therefore, we must better ourselves to compensate for our weaknesses, or at least learn to live with them. However, by the same token, we are not asked to deny our strengths, either. God gave them to us for a reason.

Allender’s primary purpose of writing “Leading With a Limp” is to challenge leaders to acknowledge their flaws and weaknesses, to embrace them, and even declare them openly to others at times. Why? Because when God accomplishes the remarkable by using the unlikely, it demonstrates His power and brings Him glory. From “Star Wars” to “Rudy” to the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy to “Slumdog Millionaire”, filmmakers know the power of an inspiring story featuring an unlikely commoner triumphing against all odds and accomplishing what seems impossible – essentially the David and Goliath story retold over and over again in cinemas across the globe.

STRENGTH
Acknowledging our strengths and working in them demonstrates our gratitude to God. Allender states it this way:

…we must not deny or hide from the reality of our unique dignity. We are made in the image of God, and we are uniquely woven with awesome beauty. We may be remarkably handsome or bright, possess great musical ability or a hysterical sense of humor. We may possess remarkable abilities to encourage others or to read the nuances of relationships. Whatever marks us with glory, we are meant to prize it and use it for the sake of others. (3)

I think that God smiles when we operate to the best of our ability in one of our areas of strength. I think His response would be similar to that of a father, who smiles while watching his child excitedly run to their room with the new crayons he just gave them, and emerge soon thereafter to give him the new piece of art they just created. You can be assured that, no matter the quality of this new “masterwork,” it will be gracing the refrigerator door! God wants us to make full use and bring to full redemptive potential every gift that He provides to us – in fact it pleases Him when we do, as we show our gratitude to Him over and over again by creating art for Him, whether it be a stirring poem, a brilliant invention, or an inventive business marketing plan. (It makes me wonder if God has anyone’s Excel spreadsheets currently tacked to His refrigerator door!)


WEAKNESS
Acknowledging our weaknesses, on the other hand, demonstrates our dependency on God. As Allender says:

… we must also not deny or hide from the reality of our depravity. Each of us has a unique way of hiding shame and blaming others for our failures. We must admit the truth that we are a mess and that we mar everything we do with some stain of the Fall. (4)

We acknowledge our dependency on God by declaring to ourselves and to others that we are not able on our own to accomplish a task for Him. Therefore, when a favorable outcome occurs – when we find success – we can keep no glory for ourselves. It all goes to God. And we must know that God is pleased with that, as well. I can imagine His response being similar to that of a father when his child asks for $5.00 so they can go buy him a present. When the child presents the gift to him, the father is no less touched by the child’s love and devotion, even though he essentially just financed his own gift. That is why we can sing from our souls with worship artist Chris Tomlin, “Not to us, but to Your name be the glory!”


Most importantly, it is central to our faith to remember that God loves us with an all-encompassing love. He loves us when we are victorious, and He loves us just as much when we are frail. He loves us when we beam with confidence and when we shrink in cowardice. He loves us through all the rise and fall and glory and failure and joy and sorrow. His love for us never dims.

As Brennan Manning professes in his amazing book, “The Furious Longing of God”:

… the God I’ve come to know by sheer grace, the Jesus I met in the grounds of my own self, has furiously loved me regardless of my state – grace or disgrace. And why? For His love is never, never, never based on our performance, never conditioned by our moods – of elation or depression. The furious love of God knows no shadow of alteration or change. It is reliable. And always tender. (5)

And so, we must furiously chase after God, folding together both our strengths and weaknesses as we strive to find and follow His will for us. As Allender says:

We can expect nothing more or less from ourselves and our leaders than to know Jesus better through their brokenness as well as our own. We must demand of ourselves and our leaders to limp and fall forward into the strong arms of grace. (6)

I close with the words of Paul in II Corinthians 12 [speaking at first in the person of God],

9 “…My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me. 10 … For when I am weak, then I am strong.

ENDNOTES:

1. Dan Allender, Leading With a Limp (Colorado Springs: Waterbrook Press, 2006), 149-150.
2. Allender, Leading With a Limp, 162.
3. Allender, Leading With a Limp, 163.
4. Allender, Leading With a Limp, 164.
5. Brennan Manning, The Furious Longing of God (Colorado Springs: David C. Cook Publishing), 35.
6. Allender, Leading With a Limp, 199.

AS THEY WERE GOING...

(8/2/10)
(At Home in Concord, NC)

Hi God. Everything is quiet here now. It’s 10:00pm and Kim has just gone to bed. The TV is off, and the only things I hear are the sound of my own breath and the low “whoosh” of our central air conditioning (for which I am ever so grateful on this hot, humid summer night!). I am sitting here in our great room on our old worn-out sofa… the one that swallows you whole when you sit down due to the sagging springs underneath the cushions – which is why we should probably call it sitting “in” our sofa, not sitting “on” our sofa. Buster is sleeping in one of his favorite spots… just above my left shoulder on top of the sofa cushion.

I have wanted to sit down and write in my journal for several days now, but this is the first time I have actually taken the time to do so. A few days ago, as I was preparing Sunday’s multimedia slides for our guest speaker’s message, one particular phrase from a Bible story he mentioned stood out to me as I read it.

The story, found in the gospel of Luke, is one that I have heard many times – and have even taught on it a few times – throughout my life. It’s the story of Jesus healing the ten lepers. It goes like this (my paraphrase):

Jesus was walking toward Jerusalem when ten lepers yelled out at him from a distance. (They had to do everything from a distance, since they were considered societal outcasts due to their disease.) They called out, “Master, have mercy on us!” Jesus instructed them to go and show themselves to the priests… which they did. As they were on their way, they noticed that they had been healed. One of the ten stopped in his tracks, ran back, knelt at Jesus’ feet, and thanked Him. Jesus asked (rhetorically, of course), “Weren’t there ten of you? Where are the other nine? Stand up and go. Your faith has healed you.”

Now, here is the phrase that jumped out at me – it is a small detail of the story that I had never noticed before now. Luke 17 says:

14 He looked at them and said, “Go show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were cleansed of their leprosy.

Did you catch it? The verse says that “… as they went…” they were healed. When they took those first few steps toward the village, they were still lepers… still outcasts… still hopelessly stricken by the AIDS of their day. If a miracle of God hadn’t intervened, they would have looked completely foolish. They no doubt would have caused quite a commotion in the village. They would have been ridiculed, cursed, and screamed at as they made their way through the town on their way to the temple. And in addition to that, they probably would never have made it to the priests at all – the temple guards would have surely lost their jobs if they had let ten diseased lepers anywhere near the priests that day. But they didn’t let their "fears of the worst” deter them. Why? Because they were in a state of total desperation. I mean, what could have been worse than this life they were forced to live? Thrown out of town due to leprosy… even required by law to verbally announce their approach by crying out “Unclean!!” And so this desperation drove them to risk looking foolish – to risk ridicule and embarrassment – if it meant finding a better life than the one in which they were hopelessly trapped.

And “while they were on their way,” so the Bible says, they were healed. In other words, they had to step out in complete faith – even at the risk of looking like complete idiots – before they received their answer from God. I think that Jesus painted a beautiful portrait of the kind of faith that He asks of us – the kind that drives us to simply step out and go where He asks us to go, swallowing our pride and casting aside any worry about “what people might think” or “whom we might offend” or “what if Christ doesn’t come through this time.” It is the kind of faith that says simply (as Jesus said to the one leper who returned to thank Him in verse 19), “Stand up and go.”

This kind of reckless faith is conceived and incubated only in a desperate heart. Like the Prodigal Son, we must come to the end of ourselves… i.e. the death of any naïve notions that we can accomplish anything at all by relying on our own intellect, wiles, and resources. When we realize – like the lepers did – that Christ is our only hope, then we also realize that the path He points us toward is the only path toward true contentment and healing for us. And that drives us to “stand up and go…” even if it doesn’t seem to make sense… even if we can’t see a good outcome ahead… even if we can’t see anything at all.

God, my desperate heart cries out to You. I will go where You are pointing, even when it doesn’t seem to make sense… even when there is a distinct risk of looking completely foolish. I will be Your fool, O God. I would rather be God’s fool than anyone else’s sage.

PERSPECTIVE

(4/26/10)
(Site B53, Wilson Creek Valley Overlook, Blue Ridge Parkway)

I’m sitting here in my SUV at this overlook, watching a storm pass over the mountain on its way east toward the North Carolina piedmont. (This is the same storm that chased me down from Beacon Heights about a few moments ago!) I am looking over into Wilson Creek Valley, where just a few moments ago there were only light gray clouds visible. You could barely make out the outlines of some of the low-lying hills through the clouds. But now the wind has blown the clouds further down the mountainside, and more and more of this amazing vista is emerging from beneath the gray.

It shows me once again Your perspective, O God. You look down on all of it. You see what is coming, what is here, and what has passed. You see in detail and you see panoramically. Nothing escapes Your gaze. Thank You for seeing me and knowing me. Thank You for choosing to love me and to be interested in my tiny little life.

Over the past two weeks, I have heard three references to the Bible story of Jesus feeding the five thousand. I have begun to think that perhaps there is some significance to that “coincidence.” So I just finished reading the story again – one that I have heard hundreds of times since childhood – and the words seemed to leap off the page and spring to life again as I read it. Here is the way it is told in Mark 6:

35 Late in the afternoon his disciples came to him and said, “This is a remote place, and it’s already getting late. 36 Send the crowds away so they can go to the nearby farms and villages and buy something to eat.” 37 But Jesus said, “You feed them.” “With what?” they asked. “We’d have to work for months to earn enough money to buy food for all these people!” 38 “How much bread do you have?” he asked. “Go and find out.” They came back and reported, “We have five loaves of bread and two fish.” 39 Then Jesus told his disciples to have the people sit down in groups on the green grass. 40 SO they sat down in groups of fifty or a hundred. 41 Jesus took the five loaves and two fish, looked up toward heaven, and blessed them. Then, breaking the loaves into pieces, he kept giving the bread to the disciples so they could distribute it to the people. He also divided the fish for everyone to share. 42 They all ate as much as they wanted, 43 and afterward, the disciples picked up twelve baskets of leftover bread and fish. 44 A total of 5,000 men and their families were fed from those loaves!

Here are a few things I notice about this story:

(1) The disciples don’t immediately turn to Jesus and expect a miracle. They begin by thinking in finite terms – which, I must admit, I probably would have done also. I have a tendency to turn to supernatural intervention as a last resort instead of a first option. And I think God wants us to use the good brains He gave us sometimes. I think it pleases Him when we do, actually. But in some instances – 5,000 hungry men and their families, for example – I think it actually seems more logical to turn to the guy that just a little earlier had calmed a storm with His voice!

(2) Jesus says, “You feed them.” The disciples say, “With what?” And then Jesus answers with another question (and I paraphrase), “What do you have?” God wants us to use what He gave us: compassion, organizational skills, imagination, drive, brains, sense of humor, artistic talent, wealth, etc. When we are willing to place these in the hands of Jesus, then the miracle can commence.

Just think about it. Jesus could have quickly solved this dilemma by having fish sandwiches magically appear before each person there. With just a word from His lips, He could have turned the rocks on the hillside into bread – even Satan himself knew that Jesus could do that trick. But He didn’t. He used the disciples’ work. And here’s some more food for thought: do you think it was easy to get 10,000 people (remember: 5,000 men and their families) organized into orderly groups of fifty and a hundred… without a P.A. system or a megaphone? I can just picture the disciples organizing the crowd… spreading the instructions by word-of-mouth… calmly answering bewildered questions and resolving disputes… entertaining the hungry children until the baskets of food arrived. These ordinary men used what they had and rose to the occasion. And Jesus used what they had – not just the food that they found, but also the skills that they possessed – then added what only He could do; and through this collaboration, they accomplished the extraordinary. And He wants to use us – our finite, flawed, fleshly selves – to accomplish the truly remarkable and inexplicable. The equation is FINITE + INFINITE = MIRACLE.

(3) In the end, there were twelve basketfuls left over. Jesus provides more than enough to help us help others and accomplish His purposes. He will give us courage, wisdom, strength, and compassion enough to do whatever He instructs us to do (just like He instructed the disciples that day on the hillside). All we have to do is obey Him.


The first time I heard this Bible story referenced was last week when I attended a worship service at All Souls Church in Knoxville, TN. The pastor pointed out that this story exemplifies how Jesus will help you finish well anything that He calls you to do. The disciples didn’t come back after feeding the first 1,000 and say, “Ummm, Jesus? This is so embarrassing, but... we just ran out of food.” Jesus will provide more than we need. He will totally provide for us if we are doing what He instructed us to do.

The second time I heard this story was when Mark Batterson referred to it in his encouraging book, “In a Pit With a Lion on a Snowy Day.” He is talking about trusting God even when the odds are stacked against you. Batterson quips that the odds against Jesus and His disciples were 5,000 to 7! He says:

The truth is this: “To the infinite, all finites are equal.” There is no big or small, easy or difficult, possible or impossible. When it comes to God, there are no degrees of difficulty. There are no odds when it comes to God. All bets are off. (1)

Batterson asks a few sentences later, “How big is your God?” (2) My answer to this challenging question? Well, most days it is this: “God is big enough to handle anything, empower anything, and fund anything He calls me to do.” It is all a matter of perspective – and I can achieve the extraordinary when I see things through God’s instead of mine.

The third reference to this story was toward the end of Batterson’s book where he quotes an email he received from one of his church members named Kim:

What limits are you listening to? “I’m too old.” “I have a family to think about.”… “What if I fail?” “It’s too expensive.” The list goes on forever. Remember this: we serve an unlimited God with unlimited resources. A God who looked at a few loaves and fishes and saw a banquet for five thousand people. (3)

God can fund my “big idea,” whatever it may be. He can provide everything I need. I just need to trust and follow Him.

I will trust You, O God. Thank You for Your provision, Your presence, and Your power. My declaration of total faith in You is the same one that Paul wrote in Ephesians:

13 I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength.

ENDNOTES:

1. Mark Batterson, In a Pit With a Lion on a Snowy Day (Colorado Springs: Multnomah Books, 2006), 33.
2. Batterson, In a Pit With a Lion on a Snowy Day, 34.
3. Batterson, In a Pit With a Lion on a Snowy Day, 156.

SOLITUDE AND CAMARADERIE

(4/29/10)
(Site B53, Linville Falls Campground, Blue Ridge Parkway)

I have reached the end of an amazing eight-day vacation here in the mountains. It has been just what I needed! I feel so much better – more rested, more grounded, more patient, and more eager than I have in a long while. And as I sit here in my tent now and reflect over the past eight days, I can see that I have made a significant discovery during my sabbatical here in the North Carolina mountains. More about that later…

I must be really honest right now. As I was preparing to leave, I counted up the days that I would actually be by myself up here in the mountains (due to my wife Kim, my stepson Michael, and his friend Huan coming up for the weekend; and my twenty-two-year-old son Nate coming up for a couple of days later in the week), and I must admit that I had mixed feelings. While I was genuinely happy they were all coming up here, I was just a little grumpy about it, as well. “Only three days to myself out of eight? That’s not enough! I need more time alone!” (Actually, it ended up being about four days total – half of the total time. I don’t know why I was being such a grouch about it!)

Kim and the boys arrived about a day later. It was so great that first night when they arrived – watching them all (Kim included) having fun throwing various things into the campfire just to watch them burn… and the boys chasing each other around the campground shooting Nerf darts at each other… and Kim happily relaxing by the fire – I soon found that all my grumpiness had melted away. The next day we went out and explored. We visited Grandfather Mountain, walked across its famous “Mile-High Swinging Bridge” (which thankfully – or sadly, depending on your perspective – doesn’t really swing all that much anymore) and scrambled out onto the rocks to enjoy the incredible view. Later, we returned to the nearby Blue Ridge Parkway, and the boys and I hiked up to Beacon Heights, a massive rock outcropping with a panoramic view of Wilson Creek Valley… one of my favorite spots. I enjoyed the scenery and the crisp breeze while Michael and Huan staged a video-game-like “battle” with their walking sticks, waging war to see who would rule the rock.

We capped the day off with a drive to Valle Crucis, NC to shop at Mast General Store – a must-see if you are ever anywhere near Boone. Mast is “a blast from the past” (please pardon the unintentional rhyming slogan) – the quintessential general store situated in a hundred-year-old building; complete with creaky, uneven floors, ice cold sodas sold in real glass bottles, and a bottle cap checkerboard perched on an old barrel next to a pot-bellied stove. Don’t be mistaken, though… this isn’t like the “corporate nostalgia restaurants-slash-gift shops” that you find scattered around interstate exits… this is real nostalgia. Stepping through its doors is somewhat like stepping back in time – its sights, smells, and sounds transporting you back to a simpler, slower life… with the illusion only broken when you have to whip out your debit card to make your purchases!

When we awoke the next morning, a rainy Sunday greeted us. We decided to take the boys to Linville Caverns just a few miles away. We were all prepared to hear the typical twelve-year-old complaints, like “Awww… do we have to?” and “Man, this place is lame!” However, we were surprised to find that the boys were really excited when they found out we were going there. Kim and I exchanged smiles and winks as we witnessed the boys’ wonder and genuine enjoyment of the caverns. And just a few short hours later, instead of breathing a big sigh of relief, I found myself really sad as they drove away that afternoon. The campsite seemed so quiet. I felt a dull, empty ache in the pit of my stomach. It took me the rest of the evening just to reset and begin to enjoy myself again.

My son Nate arrived late Monday evening. The next morning ended up being mostly rainy, but we didn’t let that deter us. We just threw on our ponchos and had fun anyway, beginning our day with a hike up to Linville Falls. After lunch, even though the weather forecast was still a little “iffy”, we decided to hike up to Rough Ridge near the Linn Cove Viaduct (the oh-so-photogenic S-shaped bridge on the Blue Ridge Parkway). On the way up the trail, the weather was really chilly, but the view of Wilson Creek Valley was stunning from up there. Nate had never been all the way up to the upper view before, and he just loved it.

We sat there for a while, enjoying the spectacular view and a healthy snack. Then we noticed some thick gray clouds rolling their way over the mountainside behind us, coming closer and closer. We decided to pack up, put our ponchos back on, and get moving. Just as we got back on the trail, the precipitation began… but it wasn’t rain… it was sleet! It began slowly, but then the storm intensified to the point that the ground became white with the sleet and snow (yes, snow had begun to fall, as well). We found ourselves caught in the middle of an all-out winter storm… in North Carolina… the last week in April! But instead of complaining, we laughed and yelled and acted like complete idiots! We chuckled, “What a great story we will be able to tell now every time we hike this trail!” It was one of those amazing moments that you just can’t script – and we were living it. We finished that day with a late-night visit to a nearby laundromat to wash the mud out of our clothes.

The next day, we arose early and drove the expressway through Asheville to access the southern end of the Parkway so that we could enjoy a few of our favorite hikes there. After a detour due to ice, we finally arrived at Graveyard Fields, one of the most atypical and unusual features found on the entire Parkway system – a stark open area of fields and trails, right in the middle of lush forests on all sides. We hiked a total of three miles there, visiting both the lower and upper falls (both beautiful) of Yellowstone River. The sky was an amazing shade of blue, with no clouds in sight. We had a wonderful, refreshing time there.

I then took him to one of my new favorite Parkway views, Black Balsam Bald, which looms 6,214’ above and just behind Graveyard Fields. We enjoyed a half-mile hike to the summit, and were blown away by the 360-degree view. We couldn’t have picked a more perfect day to take this hike! During that entire morning, a U.S. Forest Service plane had been circling overhead, dropping fire retardant material on some mountainsides on the far side of the Parkway. While we were standing there on the summit of Black Balsam, we looked over to our left and were startled to see the plane headed right toward us – we were both at the same altitude! We actually gazed down on the airplane with wonder as it swooped below us and dropped its payload of fire retardant on the trees.

After hiking back to our SUV and heading south on the Parkway a few more miles, we hiked up to Devil’s Courthouse (a tough hike!) and ate a quick lunch at a picnic table there, overlooking the incredible view. We continued south from there, past Richland Balsam, the highest point on the Parkway (6,047’ – milepost 431.4), wound our way back to the expressway and drove back to Linville Falls. That night, two tired adventurers pulled back into the campsite and quickly retired to the comfort of their tents!

The next morning (well actually, this morning), Nate had to leave by 9:00am to get home in time for work. As we hugged goodbye (yes, the Hunters are “huggers”), I told him I was really glad he could come up – and I meant it from the bottom of my heart. Those two days had been truly legendary. (Or in the current lingo of a twenty-two year old, EPIC!) Moments like these are priceless treasures – you don’t get many of them, so you must savor them and lock them away in the deepest recesses of your heart and memory for safekeeping. I fought back tears as he backed out of the parking space, glanced back and smiled sadly as he threw up a final goodbye wave, and drove away.

It was at that moment that I realized something really huge. While solitude is important – even crucial – to one’s well-being and spiritual health, life was not meant to be experienced alone; I have found that companionship can be just as invigorating and refreshing. While I have enjoyed some truly amazing times up here alone with You, O God (and will again), the absolute sweetest, holiest moments are the ones we share with those we love. I see now that, like so many other components of our complex lives, there must be balance between solitude and camaraderie, silence and laughter, reverence and raucousness. And I have just enjoyed four fantastic, unforgettable days of each – exactly half-and-half! Thank You for Your love and Your amazing presence. But also, thank You that I am not alone. I get to share and savor a truly rich life with some truly amazing people. I can’t wait to get home to them tomorrow!

ON WAITING AND GOING

(10/22/09)
(Linville Falls Campground Site B53, Blue Ridge Parkway)

I’m sitting here at the picnic table on this chilly morning (about 40 degrees!). I just finished a bacon & egg breakfast that was delicious. To me, a trip to the mountains that didn’t include the consumption of bacon at some point would be a complete waste of time.

I’ve come up here for a few days of rest and solitude after a grueling summer and early fall. Throughout all the chaos and busyness, I kept thinking about being up here. And now here I am. I spent the first couple of days just decompressing and de-stressing. No agenda… no goal… just rest.

And that’s not too hard to accomplish when you’re in a place as beautiful as this. Due to high winds and snow last week, many of the fall leaves have already… ummm… fallen. There are still pockets of brilliant color, though – especially when you park at a scenic overlook and look down into the valleys. The colors are a muted mixture of brown, brownish-yellow, and deep red. Linville Gorge, as seen from Wiseman’s View, is especially lovely – perhaps because the trees deep in the gorge experienced less effect from the harsh winds of last week there.

I was reading Psalm 37 yesterday. It contains many encouraging verses that embolden and drive me as I seek to passionately pursue whatever is next for me. But as I take a closer look, I notice that this psalm contains two verses that seem to contradict each other:

7 Be still in the presence of the Lord, and wait patiently for him to act.

23 The Lord directs the steps of the godly. He delights in every detail of their lives.

So here’s the contradiction – in verse 27, the Lord “directs our steps”, which means we’re walking… we’re acting… we’re going somewhere. But in verse 7, David tells us to “be still” in the presence of the Lord, and “wait patiently for him to act”. So how do I wait AND go at the same time?

As I have journaled about before, “be still” (in the context of this passage) doesn’t mean “freeze” as much as it means “be quiet”. In other words, stop talking and LISTEN. As one writer said, we want to do so many things “for” our heavenly Daddy sometimes, when all He really wants for us to do is climb up on His lap, whisper, “I love you, Daddy” into His ear, and fall asleep in His arms. I think we try too hard to earn His love and acceptance sometimes – at least I know I do.

The “wait patiently” part can be a challenge sometimes for me, as well. I don’t “wait” very well. I want to act… fix… strategize… and, as my wife well knows, I can be quite stubborn sometimes. I think that there must be a listening phase before the acting phase. There must be a time when we still ourselves (quiet ourselves) before God and say, “What do You want me to do?” And then, through the Bible, through books, or just through feeling and sensing His leading, we figure out what path we need to take.

And then, as we step out in faith, He will direct our steps… as we’re going. If we just sit and wait for the certified letter from God to arrive with the entire plan mapped out for us, we will miss what He has for us. God expects us to use what He has taught us – to step out and act on it. God then opens the doors and “points” to them, if we will stay attentive. He directs our steps as we walk – as we do something.

God wants us to live a great life in Him – to experience joy and fulfillment as we honor Him with our lives. He is interested in us and our future. He “delights in every detail of our lives.” And as David says earlier in this psalm:

4 Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you your heart’s desires.

He wants us to live a life totally obsessed with Him and consumed by Him. He has so much He wants to show us, if we will just listen… and follow.

God help me to be quiet and listen to You. Help me go when You say go. Help me to run hard and courageously for You. Guide my steps as I move… as I go… as I act. Take me… lead me, O God.

PRAYER ON A RAINY DAY

(6/17/09)
(Site B53, Linville Falls Campground, Blue Ridge Parkway)

Hi God. It is evening, and I am sitting here under the canopy beside my tent, listening to the rain patter on the tarp overhead. Rain has been my almost constant companion over the last few days. It rained HARD right after I set up camp last week. It has rained every day for the last four days (some days more than others). Today, it has been almost constant – it stopped for a while around midday, but other than that, it has really poured today. I cooked dinner at my campsite in the rain tonight (and couldn’t cook breakfast at all this morning – I just gave up and went to Hardee’s!). On Dugger’s Creek Trail today, I read a placard with a quote from John Muir (more on that later) in which he talks about – you guessed it – RAIN. And finally, I’ve been listening to one of my favorite artists, Patty Griffin, as I drove around today, and the first song that played on my iPod (not kidding) was entitled – wait for it – “RAIN”!

I must say, however, that I don’t really mind the rain that much. As an elderly man that I passed today on a Linville Falls trail reminded me, “A rainy day in the mountains is better than a sunny day in the city!” Amen! I remember how dry it had been up here for the last year or two during the drought. Many streams had been reduced to trickles, or had dried up completely. I also remember the small (thankfully) forest fires that were breaking out here last year due to the dry conditions. It has been so good to travel around over the past few days and see water everywhere – tricking from tiny brooks that had long-since dried up, gurgling and laughing as it danced over rocks in countless mountain streams, and dripping from moss-covered rock ledges that lined the sides of walking trails and roadways. One downside: unfortunately there have been a few more bugs to deal with, but that’s a small price to pay for the return of ample water here in the mountains!

Now back to the quote from John Muir, the great American conservationist. Here is the quote in its entirety:

“Every rain cloud, however fleeting, leaves its mark, not only on trees and flowers, whose pulses are quickened, and on the replenished streams and lakes, but also on the rocks are its marks engraved whether we can see them or not…”

Rain is essential to life on our planet. Without it, Earth becomes another Mars – dry, barren, and lifeless. Rain indeed leaves its mark here, from replenishing Earth’s vegetation to powering streams, waterfalls and rivers that wear down the very rocks that form their boundaries and give them their personalities. (Like the Linville River today after all the rain – the low-pitched roar of the falls was awe-inspiring, and more than a little bit scary! After witnessing its power, I can envision how water can change rocks over time.)

And who sends the rain? You do, God! Rain was Your idea. As my pastor, David Henderson, says, “all of this was Your idea”. The Earth is Your garden. Psalm 65 says:

9 You take care of the earth and water it, making it rich and fertile. The river of God has plenty of water; it provides a beautiful harvest of grain. 10 You drench the plowed ground with rain, melting the clods and leveling the ridges. You soften the earth with showers and bless its abundant crops.

Psalm 104 adds this imagery:

12 The birds nest beside the streams and sing among the branches of the trees. 13 You send rain on the mountains from your heavenly home, and you fill the earth with the fruit of your labor.

Psalm 147 says this about You, God:

8 He covers the heavens with clouds, provides rain for the earth, and makes the grass grow in mountain pastures.

As I walk down the hiking trails up here and hear the birds singing and the drips as the wind shakes loose large droplets of water from the leaves overhead, I can’t help but think that You must enjoy walking through the woods up here, too. I imagine this must be one of Your favorite places here on earth!

So what about the drought over the last two years – or the floods and wind damage that occurred here when the hurricanes blew through in the fall of 2004? Were You sleeping or away on vacation? Psalm 135 says:

6 The Lord does whatever pleases him throughout all heaven and earth, and on the seas and in their depths. 7 He causes the clouds to rise over the whole earth. He sends the lightning with the rain and releases the wind from its storehouses.

Well, OK then. In other words, this is Your earth, and You can do with it what You please. As Francis Chan says:

As much as we want God to explain Himself to us, His creation, we are in no place to demand that He give an account to us… to put it bluntly, when you get your own universe, you can make your own standards. (1)

So I really can’t grumble about the rain up here this week. None of us really has a right to complain when rain washes out one of our “little events” here on Earth. Rain is just your irrigation system turning on – much like TV’s hilarious “Funniest Home Videos” that feature people getting caught on a lawn or playing field when the sprinklers come on! (I’ll try to remember that next time one of my events gets rained out!) You may choose to part the clouds and spare an event, but You may not. It doesn’t have anything to do with our faith or lack thereof, or Your sanctioning or disapproval of our event (even if it’s for a great cause), or of Your care for us or Your nonchalance toward us. I think we are trying to read too much into it – it’s just Your sprinklers kicking on!

And so, let me just say that it has been so much fun playing in your sprinklers here in your garden over the past few days, God. Thank You for sharing Your garden with us. Thank you for sharing Your rain with us. Thank You also for raining down Your love on us even more abundantly. You are an awesome God!

ENDNOTES:

1. Francis Chan, Crazy Love (Colorado Springs: David C. Cook, 2008), 33-34.