A man named John Muir wrote that the mountains call to us. And the Bible speaks that creation declares God's glory, that it waits in expectation for Christ's coming, that rocks, little and big can and will cry out.
And I believe it, that the mountains can speak.
My mother is in love with these mountains. Their call has come to me through her words, through the stories she watches and reads; it shines from the sparkle in her eyes and the scrapbooks on our shelves.
About twenty years or so into her time, she followed that call straight out to Montana, chugging alone across America in her truck with a rifle shoved under the back seat. No phone. No GPS. Just an atlas in the passenger seat.
So these Rocky Mountains of the American west danced across the stage of my childhood, carved into my imagination and my dreams. Two skiing trips before the age of twelve branded them in my heart as my homeland, my favorite place on earth.
A DreamWorks movie you might remember called Spirit: Stallion of the Cimmaron, was my favorite movie and still is. And I drove my car straight through the Cimmaron last week, green bushy slopes and red rock tumbling up to the cloudless sky in dips and cliffs.
Oh, if only I could convey the wonder and glory of it in marks on paper!
God didn't have to give us mountains,
did not need to make them lit with shades of blue and purple in the light of the fading sun,
did not need them sprawling down both sides of our continent in clouded and tremendous majesty.
They're so big that they make me forget myself. I feel like an ant that could be stepped on at their feet, and I want to be. I am overwhelmed with jealousy towards the folks that live in the scenes that color my dreams. It seems like they live at the very heart of a timeless love letter, this letter God wrote in the ink of astonishing grace, to give us a glimpse of Himself of His glory on the surface of this earth.
Each moment the whole planet is singing His song, proclaiming His glory with beauty and intricacy. We must not miss the song, but unplug and walk out and listen in the quiet.
They shout in somehow both thundering and silvery tones to the world that they were not big-banged into existence out of nothingness, that beauty is not muddled out of accidents but crafted by a Creator.
These western mountains that we ski down, that we photograph, that we hike, that I love, they are not an accident. And you are not either. Don't believe the lies whispered in blind defiance of all God's brilliance that sparkles around us.
The hands that shaped those mountains shaped you in your mother's womb. Even these mountains that I love have nothing on His promises to us. His love for us all is so much greater in strength than that of these soaring rocks. The Rocky Mountains are being blown back to dust, but His love will never fail, will never fade.
"'Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,' says the LORD, who has compassion on you." — Isaiah 54:10
I hiked up a hill above Telluride last week and sat in the aspens, rustling and whistling in the winds, and I'd swear I could hear them singing, singing of His glory.
