The Grand Canyon in Arizona is one of the natural wonders of the world. But you would never guess that driving the final 60 miles on a two-lane road from  Interstate 40 to the south park entrance. The landscape approaching the canyon is filled with hundreds of square miles of flat pine timberland. But after the hour drive, and walking the final 100 yards, one of nature’s greatest vistas emerges. The first great explorer of the Canyon John Wesley Powell states, “The wonders of the Grand Canyon cannot be adequately represented in symbols of speech, nor by speech itself.”  

Visiting the Grand Canyon is a lot like life, day in and day out our lives in this sinful world can seem like a flat pine forest.  We can appear to be getting nowhere interesting, and we often have trouble believing things will ever change. We can face constant resistance each day in the form of busyness and distraction.  This can cause us to quit connecting to God. We slowly stop reading our Bibles, praying, and remembering and be thankful for our blessings.  

However, God calls us to have an eternal perspective. The Bible reminds us that our life on earth is but a vapor, and to place our focus on God. We are called to remember that the challenges that we face following Jesus in the ordinary are moving us towards the exceptional. They are moving us toward a vista more significant and spectacular than that of the Grand Canyon. We can look forward that one day in a twinkling of an eye, at a time we do not know, the ordinary we know now will be gone and all who believe on Jesus as their savor will be with him in heaven. A place the apostle Paul states is beyond description.   

This is not a fantastical made-up story. We see glimpses of the glory of God all around in the ordinary. We study the Bible and confirm it’s truth. We pray and see God’s answers. We look back through time and often see his hand in our life and see his goodness. We see in the beauty of places like the Grand Canyon, and we know there is something beyond ourselves. When we study the Bible, pray, and remember we see glimpses of God, we can learn the reality and truth of his word. We get encouragement for the now, and we get excitement for the future. There are great vistas ahead. 

Doug

The words of British poet Robert Abrahams say it well, “For some men die by shrapnel, And some go down in flames, But most men perish inch by inch, In play at little games.”  Our goal is to identify the little games and put a stop to them and put the right weight on the right things.