Gone Camping...Again

For those of you who did not know, I am leaving for Yosemite on the 28th (at 3:00AM...) with the Hinds family. The trip that I had planned with my brother for the end of the semester fell through and he is in Kansas right now. On his way home he will be driving through the Colorado Rockies and then move on to Utah for a few nights, camping at random camp grounds for about a week. So, why am I telling you my brother's plans? This will be my first camping trip without my brother and for this reason it does not feel like I am going camping this up coming week.


I will be in Yosemite from the 28th to the 5th of July. From there I am going to San Francisco to visit Karyn until the 13th.

Sadly I didn't finish any posts...so I will not be able to leave you with anything intellectually or emotively stimulating before I leave for Yosemite. And I probably will not be posting anything while I am in San Francisco with Karyn.

On the bright side, maybe I will finally catch the elusive Marmot:

(^Elusive Marmot^)

Maybe, just maybe...I am feeling lucky...


On a more serious note: Here is a brief reflection on my personal experiences with the beauty of nature.

My mother once told me (before I left on a camping trip with my brother), "You are going to see things that declare the glory of God." Camping for me now is a time of continual meditation, prayer, and praise. But camping has not always been like this for me.


Ever since a young age I have been profoundly impacted by the beauty of nature. When I was around the age of eight I nearly fell off a cliff because I was absolutely captivated by the mountain scape and vast forests that filled my eyes and imagination. From that point on, when I went camping, I wanted to see the beauty of nature and have similar experiences, a desire that when kept "under the sun" turns sickly--I began to simply seek to love nature when I went camping and it was not until the last few years that God has helped me to hear it declare His glory.


It was a sort of idol for me. I took the light of nature's beauty and warped it into something of a strange and dark light. As a result, nature became distant to me, probably because I was distancing myself from Beauty Himself. "Nature 'dies' on those who try to live for a love of nature" (The Four Loves, 22). I felt as though nature was developing a sort of cold indifference towards me and I felt like I was blind to her stunning splendor while everyone else could see it--because I became consumed with that rush of excitement that nearly sent me off a cliff when I was eight years old.


My chief problem was that I did not seek God and know Him as glorious so that nature could inform my understanding of what the word "glory" means (without the tangible wonders that God has made, glory would remain a rather abstract and distant notion). I did not seek God even though beauty abounded around me--I just wanted beautiful things, not Beauty Himself. Instead of glorifying God, I got stuck at the sense of glory that nature is continually speaking to mankind and thought that the glory I heard of belonged simply to nature--never thinking of ascribing it to anything or anyone above nature.

In contrast with this way of looking at nature, I find the voice of George MacDonald's soul (printed in a poem) rather convicting by its purity:

"My Lord, I find that nothing else will do,
But follow where thou goest, sit at thy feet,
And where I have thee not, still run to meet.
Roses are scentless, hopeless are the morns,
Rest is but weakness, laughter crackling thorns,
If thou, the Truth, do not make them the true:
Thou art my life, O Christ, and nothing else will do."

We are taught by our Lord that those who are pure in heart shall see God (Matthew 5:8). As for what that means, purity of heart, perhaps is to seek one thing (singular commitment, integrity, the full unity of the heart), and the object of that pursuit is what the Psalmist seeks, "One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple...You have said, 'Seek my face.' My heart says to you, 'Your face, LORD, do I seek'" (Psalm 27:4, 8). Christ in his teaching on the mount reaffirms the Palmist's confidence in God's goodness to bless those who seek Him with Himself (Psalm 27:13). Surely we shall, in the words of Paul, see Him "face to face" (1Cor.13:12), and in seeing Him we shall be like Him and behold His glory forever (1John 3:2-3). Only in this purity, this singular love for God can anything be pure (Titus 1:15). Beauty is only beauty because of God.

So I leave you with this: "Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart." And this is fundamental blessedness: that God's face should shine upon you (Numbers 6:24-26). If we can be so captivated by a dim spark of His infinite glory...how glorious is our God!

God bless you all.

Gone Camping!