Tag: hidden beauty

  • After the Storm (Hidden Beauty Part 2)

    After the Storm (Hidden Beauty Part 2)

    The flurry of snow scenes in the last couple of blogs reveals my love of winter. I last blogged from a mountain trail in a white-out storm in Colorado.

    I returned to that trail one year later (see video) and paused in the silence. Its beauty reminded me of St. Augustine’s writing on how nature points to God. Check out this passage of his from the Confessions:

    I asked the earth, and it answered. “I am not He.” … I asked the sea and the deeps and the creeping things, and they answered, “We are not your God, seek higher.” I asked the winds that blow, and the whole air with all that is in it answered, “I am not God.” I asked the heavens and the sun, the moon, the stars, and they answered, “Neither are we God whom you seek.” And I said to all the things and the throng about the gateways of the senses: “Tell me of my God since you are not He. Tell me something about Him.” And they cried out in a great voice: “He made us.”

    The Treasure:
    Creation is God’s craftsmanship on display for us to enjoy. It invites us to ponder His majesty and give Him our hearts.

    If you’d rather read than watch the video, here’s the full video transcript:

    One year ago this month I was standing in this exact place on Morning Star Trail in snowshoes. If you remember it was a blizzard, and I said how things can look gray all around us—but that there’s beauty if we were to see beyond the gray of the storm. I just wanted to show you what it looks like on a beautiful, blue-sky day in the middle of the Aspen trees at 9,600 feet elevation with snowcapped mountains all around. So, a whole year has gone by, and maybe one year ago you were in the gray in a storm and hopefully you’ve come to some new beginnings this year. I know I have and I’m very grateful to have some of that trek up the path behind me and to be able to look out over beauty. We can’t be in the beauty all of the time, but when we are, it sure is nice to enjoy every moment of it.

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  • Hidden Beauty

    Hidden Beauty

    I wish I could go back and talk to the woman who said, “I feel guilty because I doubt God.” Would I give her ten top reasons to trust God when she can’t see to take her next step? Although there are many more than ten, that wouldn’t be my first response.

    I think I’d say, “I doubt too.”

    I’d tell her about the time a white-out storm blocked my view and how scared I was to put one step in front of the other. I’d tell her how, in time, the storm became the catalyst that helped me deal with my doubt.

    My ninety-six-year-old grandfather, Harry the Ancient, once told me, “The first hundred years are the hardest.” He lingered with me in that reality before giving me the second half of ancient wisdom, “But God is good and can be fully trusted with your life.”

    My grandfather’s words began to awaken me from spiritual amnesia to see the evidence of God and to begin shifting from doubt, into a posture of trust.

    Someday I will thank that woman for her honesty. Her words gave me a visual—God embracing her with His left arm and opening His right palm for her to deposit all of her doubt—and the guilt that went with it. What a beautiful picture.

    This reminds me of a snowshoe trail my friend and I hiked in a white-out storm on a mountain in Colorado (see video below). There was no color that day—only gray. But when I returned to that trail one year later the pristine view took my breath away. In the white-out days of life, there is always more going on than we can see as we shift from doubt to trust.

    The Treasure: “Honest doubt sends us on a quest for what is true and real, for that which we cannot only give intellectual assent, but can entrust our very lives to.”
    (from Your God is Too Safe, by Mark Buchanan)

    If you’d rather read than watch the video, here’s the full video transcript:

    Hey! I’m out here in the cold weather on Morning Star Snowshoe Trail in Colorado. You’ll notice behind me maybe some skiers coming down…and then there’s this snow shoe trail. The thing that occurs to me today is – sometimes life can look all gray. Actually, if we could see—if it were clear, there’s an amazing beauty all around us up here. But it’s so gray, all we can see is the snow, the trees near us, and just a little bit in front of us. And that’s the way it is in life. Sometimes we plod along with one foot in front of the other on snow shoes, and sometimes we can be like skiers that are coming down—whisking down knowing exactly where they’re going. So wherever we are in our lives—whether we’re plodding along one step at a time, or whether we’re whisking along knowing exactly where we’re going, it’s worth it to walk every step with God. See you next time.

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