COLORFUL CATHEDRALS

Scenic Overlook, Blue Ridge Parkway, NC
Natural Color Filters, Price Lake, NC

We human beings are continually evolving and those beings that adapt and reproduce will pass along the traits that have enabled their survival. Endless spirals of DNA molecules contain the elaborate and awe-inspiring language of God himself in every creature that has been created in his image. I’m intuitively certain that one of those critical traits is the innate ability to sense the changing of the seasons and make the appropriate preparations in time to survive the next one. The season of Fall seems to trigger deeply known warnings that the cold and desolate season of Winter is imminent.

The October sky is pattered by high flying wispy circus clouds occasionally highlighted in the late afternoon by colorful fire rainbows as the setting sun reflects their embedded ice crystals. The night air turns cooler and begins to restrict the flow of life-giving nutrients that sustains all living plants and trees. Green chlorophyll recedes from the tree leaves revealing their true colors of red, yellow and orange at the extreme tips. The subtle transition isn’t missed by the human beings that scurry beneath the wide-ranging tree top canopies of colorful leaves. The trees relish the opportunity to show off their new colorful garments to the wondering creatures below.

The air temperatures at the highest altitudes are the first to grow colder, so they become the “canary in the coal mine” to sound a quiet alarm that the leaf shackles of the mother trees will soon be broken. Mankind constructed paved pathways among the colorful trees long ago to enable travel in the high-country mountains. Now the multi-colors that were painted with a broad brush across these hills and mountain peaks are in full splendor. The embedded DNA of the human survivors attracts them to the colors like a moth to fire light. They begin to drive, ride and hike along the winding paths under the filtered sunlight in the woodland forests as if they were experiencing a walk through one of the grand stained glass cathedrals of Europe. But these places of spiritual worship are not man made; rather they are fashioned every year by the loving hand of a God that has never stopped creating.

NOT A GAME OF PERFECT

Imperfect Cross, Bethlehem, Israel

A pending Duke Theology graduate and friend shared his learning experience in the Holy Land last Thursday at a breakfast and thoughtfully presented everyone with an olive wood cross that was made in Bethlehem. As the bag of crosses was being passed to me I noticed an odd shaped cross through the clear plastic which I selected. This imperfect cross is slightly out of balance as the horizontal beam leans to one side, unlike the perfect being that willingly sacrificed himself for us on such a cross. There were a lot of crosses in the bag that were more perfect than this one, but it reminded me of the shells that I now pick up at the beach. When we first arrived in the Carolina’s and went shelling on the beach, I would seemingly walk forever to find the perfect shell that was not broken or misshapen or contained any flaws from days of being tumbled in the surf. Then on a much later beach trip, I began to notice the beauty that is in those shell fragments that are broken and polished by the constant pressure of the waves and the storms of life. That was the day that I began to collect those treasures that the bearer of the footsteps ahead of me had left unclaimed.

Our Creator and Savior doesn’t leave us unclaimed either. He created us humans with imperfections in a broken environment and gave us the free will to choose how we live and grow in our lives.

I’ve had two knee joint replacement surgeries and open heart bypass surgery in between them. God has taught me through my shelling experience on the Carolina beaches that the remnant zipper scars from those surgeries are not abhorrent but artistic character lines that were earned in the trenches of this broken world! And many of life’s scars are not visible, but all can be celebrated when God walks with us or even carries us on the beaches of life and helps us emerge safely on the other side of the island.

I know many of you have dabbled in the game of golf over the years and I’ve played the game on and off since I was in college fifty years ago. And one thing that I’ve learned through all those hours on a golf course is that the game of golf imitates life in so many ways. Perhaps that is one of the subconscious reasons so many of us are drawn to the game. It’s also one of those games that can never be mastered, although there are occasions when you pull off a perfect shot and can feel like you are indeed playing in the zone. Life can be like that too!

Over the years I’ve read a couple of the books by a sports psychologist, Dr. Bob Rotella. I find that he has some pretty astute observations on the game of golf and life. One of those quotes I particularly like is that:

“Golf is about how well you accept, respond to and score with your misses, much more than it is a game of perfect shots.”

And there are plenty of times in life where it seems we have absolutely no control over the adverse circumstances that we’re encountering. But we always have one very important control that we need to remember and that’s how we choose to respond to a situation. We always have a response to the hard shanks of life by communicating with our Savior who understands the suffering and pain we humans can encounter in this temporary mortal life. I don’t think it’s possible for any of us to go through life without experiencing pain and suffering. We have a lot of misses in life. It’s not a game of perfect. But when we have a solid foundation of faith based on the Word of God and the promise of His priceless grace and presence for us, we can respond with strength and the sure knowledge that He has us in the grip of His loving hands.

IMMORTALITY

Immortal, Jamestown, NC

William Shakespeare, the Bard of Avon, is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language. He created a cast of characters four hundred years ago and breathed life into them through his unprecedented talent. They’ve been introduced to generations of people and include Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, Othello, Romeo and Juliet. These characters are part of a select club that have come close to the elusive concept of immortality through the written word. If history holds true, however, they will inevitably be lost in the sands of time. Even the bard himself can’t create a promise of hope for life everlasting and he's written about it. It’s been said that practically everyone will be forgotten within two generations.

One of Shakespeare’s most famous quotes from Macbeth says it all:

“Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
that struts and frets his hour upon the stage
and then is heard no more. It is a tale
told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
signifying nothing.”

That’s a mantra for the existentialist in all of us. Solomon, acknowledged as the richest and wisest man who ever lived, writes in his opening chapter of Ecclesiastes that “there is no remembrance of men of old, and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow”. Life is “a chasing after the wind”. And the apostle James writes in chapter 4, “What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes”.

Fortunately, our Creator has left us with a much more positive message in the third chapter of John, proclaiming that if we believe in the redeeming power of His Son, our ultimate destiny does not perish with the short span of this mortal and sometimes difficult earthly life. We will transition into the priceless gift of a restored and eternal spiritual life where we’ll be reunited with those who remember us and our Creator who never forgot us!