The WORD In The Desert

JOHN 3:16-21

My wife Nancy gave me a wonderful gift this summer. I had always wanted to see some National Parks and was musing through a tour catalog which included a 10 day journey through six parks in the southwest USA. "Why don't you go?" she asked. I said it was lengthy and not cheap. In her usual wisdom she pointed out that seeing six parks in one journey was cheaper than separate trips. So with her encouragement, I went and it was wonderful. I didn't want it to end.

Our group was congenial, only 18 of us on a new 40 passenger tour bus. The tour director was knowledgeable and courteous. We visited Arches, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, Zion and the north rim of the Grand Canyon. Some travel was by small planes and hiking was available at all stops. Each day exceeded the impressions of the previous one. The incredible beauty, age and size of these places are indescribable. To be immersed in these experiences is truly to sense that we are a miniscule part of eternal, ongoing creation.

When looking into an ancient canyon which reveals millions of years of geologic history, each colored layer of rock like a very long chapter, one cannot really grasp, in ordinary human terms, how it came to be. One of our speakers, Marty Ott, quoted geologist Clarence Dutton (1889): "These dimensions have no meaning to our senses. What we are left with is a troubling sense of immensity."

The sunrises were one of the best parts of the trip. We were blessed with clear, cool September days and the early morning dawns opened the day, as John Muir said, "Shouting Hallelujah!"

It was one morning like that in my favorite stop, Zion National Park. I was up early. Pine scent was in the air, fresh and cool. No one else was around. Zion is a place where you look up at the sandstone cliffs from the canyon floor rather than looking down from a rim. As I watched, the sun was rising, lighting the skies high above the canyon walls. Then, concurrently, slowly, silently, the light descended down the copper colored monoliths, down, down to the place where I was sitting. It was a timeless experience, a revelation of eternity.

In awe, I tried to identify some reference point in my little life – some memory or past human meaning of such an experience. It was beyond any such effort.

And then the great words of I John 1:5 somehow came out of my mouth, "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all."

For many people of faith, linking the awesomeness of nature with our belief in God as creator is just natural. For others who are more skeptical, there is an uncrossable chasm of disbelief in such thoughts. Theirs is a dilemma that if unsolved perhaps leads only to some form of humanism as their faith.

Later in the day I thought about that wonderful dawn experience. I do not think it was a coincidence that I happened to be reading some thoughts by Rabbi Jonathon Sacks on the meaning of life. He quotes Ludwig Wittgenstein: "The meaning of a system must lie outside it. Football, for instance, is governed by a system of rules. If you want to learn how the game is played, you would be well advised to study that system. But if you want to understand what the game means to its players and fans, you would have to consider things like honor, camaraderie, local pride or the desire for heroes – things not in the rule book ... Science takes things apart to see how they work. Religion puts things together to see what they mean." The Great Partnership

I really like that. It is possible to have both – knowledge of how things work, and what they mean. As long as I live, I will always remember that dawning of descending light in Zion.

GPS

"But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God." John 3:21

Conversation at the edge

I PETER 3: 15-16

The walking trail along the edge of Bryce Canyon National Park has a few rustic benches for restful viewing. So it was on a clear and breezy September day, there was a sense of just `swimming in the invisible air' of the graciousness of God. It was close to perfect, the weather and the view at 8,000 feet elevation were outstanding.

This park has several natural amphitheaters etched by erosion into the sides of the Navaho sandstone cliffs. They house thousands of bizarre humanoid shapes, colored rich red and orange known as hoodoos. (They are especially spooky in the moonlight.) People enjoy talking about what or whom the shapes look like to them. It is also a place of life-giving thunderstorms with stupendous lightning displays. Wind, rain, snow and ice are constantly, gradually sculpting Bryce National Park.

Trying to take this all in, I was suddenly aware of another person coming along, also deep in thought. It was a retired heart doctor and we immediately fell into a lengthy, very interesting conversation. We sat on one of those benches watching the changing light on the hoodoos and talked of faith and religion. He had studied both for many years in connection with his surgical practice. He was now enjoying the learning and stimulation of travel to interesting places.

I cannot fully recapture the vitality of our discussion so these thoughts are partial. His knowledge was more extensive than mine but his questions paralleled many of my own. We hit it off as people say, an example I think of the translation that the kingdom of God is between you. I asked him if I could make some notes on his thoughts. He grinned and agreed.

He had practiced and lived medicine for over 32 years and had watched so many people suffer and die, even with good medical care, that he started to ask, "What is faith? What is real?" Facing the deep questions of the brevity and uncertainty of life in that setting was awesome.

He said that life seems totally random and chaotic, that scientific research tries to make sense of it all, but it seldom really succeeds. Therefore, we can learn to make use of chaos, harnessing some of it but never able to fully change the nature of it. He believes in our consciousness, our awareness of all of life, but that we have not even come close to being aware of who we are or what we can do. His viewpoint reinforced the belief of some that we use less than 1 % of the billions of brain cells we each have. We do have symptoms of greatness, he said, such as spiritual reverie when visions of possibilities occur. Medically this means that blood is moving to a different part of the brain. So what can we discover, really?

What then, is life itself? Does religion give us any really good knowledge of it? What can Christianity really bring to the world? I mean REALLY. What should be taught to the...