Jim and I just returned from a wonderful trip that took us to some of the National Parks. Before we left, I was in a slump – mentally and spiritually. I was missing meaningful ministry and friends I left behind in New Jersey and that sense of being home in a church. I was anxious to get away, enjoy the beauty of God’s great creation and listen for His voice.
The trip was wonderful. I was reminded nearly every day of how much I love being in God’s creation. I think even someone with a facility for words that far surpasses mine, would be hard pressed to describe the natural beauty of the west.
One of my photos is of the profile of George Washington high above me on Mt. Rushmore. I could never describe just how big that mountain is, or how small George’s head is, but by accidently capturing a car driving by below, it’s possible to try and wrap the mind around the contrast. Think huge, massive, way up there over your head!
Coming first from the noise and light pollution of Las Vegas, and then the busyness of Salt Lake City, it’s impossible to describe the silence that greeted us when we arrived at U+ (U Cross) ranch in Wyoming. At that point, we had shared a bus and many meals with thirty other people, and it was very enjoyable, and occasionally noisy. It was also why U Cross was memorable. Not a single traffic sound. No other residences as far as the eye could see. Just the spray of the farmer’s irrigation system to break the silence and the smell of alfalfa in the air. What a balm for my soul! The Lord reminded me how good solitude is for me. In it, I am instantly transported into His presence. I could have spent a few more days there.
From Arizona, to Utah, to Nevade to Wyoming to South Dakota, the terrain was constantly changing - from desert and cactus, to huge bare mountains of red rock, to the vastness of the great plains, to mountains covered with Ponderosa and Lodgepost pines, to the sulfurous bubbling pots of Yellowstone. Bison, moose, long horned sheep, bear, horses – all feasts for the eyes. The Lord does all things well.
We had a wonderful tour guide who kept us enthralled throughout two weeks of travel. Incredibly well informed, he taught us just about all there was to know about the geology, history and culture of the places we visited. A Native American guide on our raft ride on the Snake River explained the proud culture of her tribe as she pointed out the beauties of her river canyon at Lake Powell, Utah. I was reminded that the Lord gave me a mind to love learning, and I need to keep doing it.
If you’ve been reading my blogs for any length of time, then you know I am an introvert. Introverts enjoy people, but we do tend to be quiet and not quite comfortable with people we don’t know, or in large groups. So, we might go out to dinner with two friends, but we would probably turn down large parties and going on cruises with a crowd.
Unlike extroverts who are totally energized when they’re with people, we introverts are exhausted by socializing, and need some alone time afterwards to recuperate. Jim and I had never taken this long a trip (14 days) confined to a bus with thirty strangers (not counting the tour guide and the bus driver). It was a little risky for us to do so, but I’m so thankful we did.
Our tour director changed our seats in the bus every day so that we each had opportunities to sit in the front and back, and across from different people. Before we set out for the day, he encouraged us to get to know our seatmates across the aisle. Jim and I got to know others a little at a time. Perfect!
It was typical at breakfast or dinner for someone to come up and ask if they could join us for the meal. In that way, the Lord blessed us with opportunities to get to know so many new people, many of them from outside the US. It was so much fun talking with Brits, for example, about the words we each use to describe the same things! Did you know that Brits call zucchini, “courgettes”?
One evening we were seated with a family from Nebraska: grandmother, daughter and son in law, and their twenty one year old daughter. I had the privilege of sitting next to the young girl and asking all about her course of study at college. At the end of a very pleasant conversation she thanked me for taking an interest in her. That conversation was the Lord’s way of reminding me that I love getting to know younger women, and how much younger women are blessed when older women take an interest. As soon as I came home, I asked my daughter Becky if she and her friends would mind if I joined their book club so I can rub elbows with the younger women I love so much. Who knows where it might lead? It wouldn’t be the first time I counted a much younger woman as a friend.
There was a day early on that Jim and I were having breakfast, and sitting alone, which didn’t happen often. We had bowed our heads and thanked the Lord for our meal and when I looked up, I noticed one of the British women smiling at us. Later in the week when we had dinner with her and her husband and another couple, she leaned over and told me she was also a Christian and that we would have to “talk”. We never did have that chance, but we promised to correspond.
There was also this completely serendipitous thing. I was nearly finished reading the book, The Girls of Atomic City, by Denise Kiernan. It tells the story of the secret city built during WWII to enrich uranium in preparation for making the bombs that would be dropped on Japan, putting an end to the war in the Pacific.
One night we were seated at dinner with a couple from Tennessee. Jim and I were chatting with the husband and I asked what he did before he retired. When he said he worked at the labs in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, I nearly fell off my seat with excitement.
If you’re a book nerd, you will probably get this. The lab built to enrich uranium and build the bomb, was designed and built at Oak Ridge. I was amazed to find that it is now a real city, and not a temporary one, and that they were still working with uranium – only now it isn’t secret, and now their work focuses on developing nuclear energy that is smaller and safer. This was a gift I believe the Lord knew would excite and delight me.
I’ve done a lot of chatting with the Lord lately as well about how much I miss my dearest friends from New Jersey. We had served together in the leadership of Bible Study Fellowship for around ten years. We served the Lord together, worshiped together, and prayed together and even after our BSF class closed, we still met often for breakfast and have kept in touch since we moved. I so miss the sweetness of their fellowship in the Lord.
I had emailed them before the trip and asked them to pray that the Lord would speak to my heart while I was away. One of them said she would be away herself with her daughter and son. Would you like to guess where? The National Parks.
With incredible excitement, we compared itineraries, and found we would both be at Page, Wyoming on the same day! Really, what are the “chances”? Her daughter, bless her heart, quickly changed their hotel reservation so we would be at the same hotel. Our schedule, since we were on a tour, was not as flexible, but we managed to squeeze in an hour, an hour past both of our bedtimes, so we could meet.
We spent that time catching up on things, but what we mostly did was hug, hold hands and marvel at the grace of God to bring both of us to the same place at the same time!
So, this vacation was a marvel – of God’s creative genius, of His love for His children in all the ways He teaches and blesses them, and for His endless capacity to make them go, “WOW!”. God is amazingly, incredibly, and unfailingly good.
And He’s not just generically good (if we can even describe Him that way), He is also personal, intimately involved with His world and His children. He has designed a world, though marred by the effects of the fall of Adam and Eve, to blow us away with its beauty, and direct our thoughts and praise to the One who made it. All of what He has done highlights HIM and most especially Jesus, by whom and for whom and through whom, this world was made. And the One who holds it together.
I saw God’s power and glory through His indescribable creation, and I also saw Him in the quiet of Wyoming, in the people He has made in His image (flawed though we be!), in the way He orchestrates things so that long-time friends can meet half a country away, in inquisitive children, in the gifts He has given people to carve huge life like faces out of stone, in the special gifts He gives just to delight us.
All His works shall praise His name
in earth and sky and sea.
