It’s the
beauty.
One must walk
thirty miles and ascend twelve thousand foot Muir Pass to get to McClure
Meadow. One might even be too exhausted
to take it all in when they make it. But
that beauty is just stunning. The beauty
takes one’s breath away. After seeing
these places like Thousand Island Lake or pitching my tent on a peninsula in
Rae Lakes I come away a different person.
The beauty somehow fills my soul in a way like the way my stomach is
filled by a gourmet meal. No, that does
not even come close!
One person has
said that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder. “ Whoever said that was claiming that beauty is
subjective. What may be beautiful to me
may not be to you. And whoever said that
probably did not stand in the middle of Yosemite Valley or perch on top of
Mount Whitney. No relativistic
justification for beauty needs to be given in these places. In the glory of a solid granite monolith with
a 100-foot waterfall cascading into a
lake below beauty is universal. And I will
say it even more strongly, beauty is universal because beauty emanates from
God. Beauty is the character of God. He
creates beauty, He exudes beauty, He is beauty.
As divided as
the people of our nation can be at times over politics, I have never heard a
disagreement about the beauty of that first view of Yosemite Valley or the
glory of an evening sunset over a High Sierra Lake. Beauty is good. It is objectively good because it comes from
God.
I am not saying
we should worship beauty or worship creation.
But beauty compels us to know that there is something more, something
deeper, something behind it all. Beauty
is evidence to me that God is real and He is alive and active in our
world. He never seems to tire of
creating sunsets! He did not just start
creation like a fully wound watch and then leave on vacation. He is at work now. He is constantly creating
beautiful things.
David said in
Psalm 27, “One thing I have asked of the Lord…to gaze upon the beauty of the
Lord…” God is beautiful. And I think it is real safe to say that God
is far more beautiful than anything we have ever seen on a backpack trip in the
mountains, along the coast or in the painted desert gorges. God is far more beautiful. When we stand in God’s beauty we will be
deeply moved and overwhelmed with joy.
Somewhere along
the line of bad ideas someone said that Heaven is going to be a place in the
clouds where we sit around all day and play a harp. Boring! But nothing could be more false.
I might be more
interested if someone said that Heaven was an endless backpack trip in the
beautiful mountains. At least then I would have that beauty that draws me and
fills me.
But if God who
created all of this beauty we backpackers think about the other 355 or so days
of the year also created Heaven, what are we worried about! Heaven will be marvelous.
I must admit
that I don’t despair that I won’t get to backpack all the great places on
earth. If I don’t get to New Zealand or
Hike the Yukon I won’t be disappointed.
I won’t miss out! Heaven will
blow those places away.
And I have not
even mentioned the most beautiful thing of all. Or I should say the most
beautiful Person of all: Yahweh. Oh, to
gaze at the wondrous majesty of the lover of our souls! One look at Jesus will make the sunset over
the Lost Coast Trail look like a trash dump in comparison. And we will be drawn in and filled by this
beauty. We won’t have to learn to like
it as we did our vegetables or freeze dried beef stroganoff. He will appear to us as the most beautiful
and magnificent thing we have ever experienced.
And this beauty will be inexhaustible.
Here is what I
mean. As much as I love exploring the
canyons of Utah, I must sadly admit that after several days the gorges and
gulches can be a bit redundant. My
beauty nerve gets a little dull and I don’t enjoy it as much as at the start. But in Heaven the beauty will continuously
increase. We will not ever get to a
place where the beauty gets old or “you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all” sort
of situation. As we increase in our
experience of God our experience in the joy of beauty will always be new and
fresh and more beautiful than before.
And each day we will wonder how it will get any better. That is what our future with our beautiful
God will be like.
““What no eye has seen,
what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived”[b]—
the things God has prepared for those who love him—“ 1 Corinthians 2:9
what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived”[b]—
the things God has prepared for those who love him—“ 1 Corinthians 2:9
Backpacking in
all the beauty of our world makes me long even more for Heaven and being in a
deeper presence of my Heavenly Father because I know it will be overwhelming
beauty. And it won’t just be a visual
experience but a whole self-experience.
Our entire senses, mind, heart, emotions, and soul will experience this
beauty of our God.
I often sit
during the winter time and long for the beauty of the trail. I am learning more and more to long for the
beauty of my ultimate destination and my ultimate beautiful God.
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