Yosemite National Park – The Greatness of God and the Beauty of His Creation
Last week Judy and I travelled to Yosemite National Park in California. In this post I share some of my experiences in this amazing place. First, some Scripture:
“But God made the earth by His power; He founded the world by His wisdom and stretched out the heavens by His understanding” (Jeremiah 10: 12 NIV).
“Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them! Then the trees of the forest will sing, they will sing for joy before the Lord, for He comes to judge the earth” (1 Chronicles 16: 32, 33 NIV).
The whole world was created by God, but in some places men and women can feel closer to the Creator than others. For me, Yosemite is one of those places. It is hard not to be awed and humbled in Yosemite. It is easy to feel vanishingly small and ephemeral there, dwarfed by the rocks, the magnificent trees, and the endless stars at night. But, standing on top of a granite dome or sitting on a log in the forest, Yosemite is one of those places where I hear the voice of God most clearly – “I am with you; you are my beloved son. This beauty is part of my gift to you.”
I perceived Yosemite on at least two levels. As a geologist, I was fascinated by the rocks. The granite domes that make up the Sierra Nevada mountains – one giant suite of batholiths – were produced by the subduction of the Pacific plate under the North American plate. The geologic processes that formed this mountain range were vast and complex. All of this happened about 100 million years ago.
I was also fascinated by the trees. There are giant sequoia trees in the Park – the largest known trees on earth. The famous Mariposa Grove is one of the reasons the Park was first created in 1864 by Abraham Lincoln. But the pine and fir trees are also magnificent – hundreds of years old, some attaining heights of more than 250-feet with trunks that can be over 8-feet wide. Some of the trees I was walking past were alive when Columbus discovered the New World; many were alive during the American Revolution!
l also connected with this beautiful place on a spiritual level. Not in the sense of a New Age spirituality or Pantheism – God is not in a tree or a rock. Paul said it well: “He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together” (Colossians 1: 17 NIV). Wherever I looked, the trees, rocks, lakes, and sky formed an integrated tableau of harmonious perfection that constantly spoke to me of the character and nature of the One who created all of this – perfect, beautiful, ordered, and organized. The work of a Great Inventor. I walked in an awesome temple of praise for the one who brought all of this into existence. Everywhere I looked I saw the glory of God – the outstreaming manifestation of His beauty. No cathedral of man can compare to what God has created in Yosemite.
And not just because of the beauty and grandeur of the landscape. But because every rock, tree, stream, lake, and field were formed by an incredible and amazing complex set of processes and interactions acting across many length and time scales – all of this designed and orchestrated by God. He is the ultimate architect and engineer. In this wonderous place, I felt the presence of His Spirit all around me.
It was on a walk into Lukens Lake, off of the Tioga road, that I sensed His presence most keenly.
It was a short walk – maybe two miles round trip. And unlike in the valley the previous day, we were the only people on the trail. It was silent. The sky was pure blue. We walked though groves of giant pine and fir trees on a trail of spongy pine needles and gray granite through shade, shadow, and shafts of bright light. The trail gently undulated as it passed through a saddle between two granite domes. When we reach the lake, the surrounding pine trees were reflected in a mirror of intense blue, the water barely rippling as a soft, gentle breeze flowed over the lake. In its own way, this scene was as beautiful and powerful as our view of Half Dome and the great glaciated Yosemite valley we had seen from the top of Sentinel dome and Glacier Point the day before.
In a stupid accident I had jammed my little toe earlier in the morning. It was throbbing by the time we got to the lake so I rested on a log while Judy went on ahead to scout out the rest of the trail. (Turns out, it was broken). There, on that log, I heard God’s voice clearly. Now I understood why Jesus had frequently to escape the crowds and seek His Father’s voice in the wilderness. The Father’s voice – His real, intimate, and beautiful voice – is best heard when we are surrounded by His creation, far from human distractions, in a place of total silence.
In that place, sitting on the log looking at the field in front of me, surrounded by giant pine trees, wrapped in silence, I felt a real sense of peace – the peace that comes from knowing that you are in His presence – no distractions, nothing between His heart and yours. No anxiety, no fear, no inner voice of accusation, condemnation, hurry or worry. It was a place of rest!
Rest or abiding in Him, I believe, is the most essential condition for hearing and receiving from God. Apart from rest, or abiding in Him, He might be present to us but we are rarely fully present to Him. It is resting in Him that is so rarely experienced in our culture today.
In that place of peace and rest, sitting on a log in a forest, God spoke to me about many things. It really is true that His is a still, small voice. Yet in that quiet, I heard Him clearly.
He spoke to me about His love for the world. He told me that the beauty around me was not only a small indication of His beauty and majesty, but was His gift to the world – and to me in that place. And what a gift! I heard (felt) God tell me that the magnitude of His gift reflects the magnitude of His love for the world – the entire world – and for me. We are (and I am) incredibly valuable to God. Perhaps this is the reason why “God so loved the world” is the best known and most loved verse in the Bible. But even this gift, seen in Yosemite (and many other places in the world) pales in comparison with the gift that God gave us on the cross – the life of His only Son.
So in this sense, what God showed me in Yosemite and what He spoke to me while I was sitting on that log, pointed to Jesus – His life, His death, His resurrection, and His return. What I saw and felt in Yosemite was a sign – an everlasting sign of God’s love and faithfulness. The prophet Isaiah wrote about this thousands of years ago:
“You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands. Instead of the thorn bush will grow the pine tree, and instead of briers the myrtle will grow. This will be for the Lord’s renown, for an everlasting sign, which will not be destroyed” (Isaiah 55: 12, 13 NIV).
The log was not only a place of rest. It was also a place of surrender because there can be no real rest until there is surrender. As I rested and surrendered I felt my heart being softened. And a soft heart is required to receive what God has prepared to give us. I am not sure exactly what all God wanted to give me, but I know in that moment I felt a flood of His love. I was able to receive the Father’s love for me in that place of rest, peace, and silence.
Later as I reflected on what I felt in those few moments before Judy came back and told me I needed to see what was just around the corner, I sensed that God spoke the words to me I heard only one time before in another place: “John, you are more beautiful to me than all of my creation in Yosemite.”
That log was a place of rest, peace, surrender, and a place in which accumulated ‘junk’ – doubt, anxiety, fear, and a hard heart – were washed away and cleansed by His Spirit as I received His love.
Lukens lake was a gift to me and to Judy. She had her own time with God; her own epiphany. But that is her story; this is mine. As we walked back to the car – out of our ‘secret place’ and back into the world – we both shared the same emotion – joy! We are not alone, we are loved, we are valuable!
“For the Lord is the great God, the great King above all other gods. In His hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to Him . . . Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker; for He is our God and we are the people of His pasture, the flock under His care” (Psalm 95: 3 – 7 NIV).
“Sing for joy, O heavens, for the Lord has done this: shout aloud, O earth beneath. Burst into song, you mountains, you forests and all your trees, for the Lord has redeemed Jacob, He displays His glory in Israel” (Isaiah 44: 23 NIV).
God displayed His glory in Jesus, who the prophets of Israel foretold. But we also saw His glory on display in Yosemite. And in that place we sensed that the mountains, the forests, and the trees were singing over us.
In awe of Him and His creation,
John
PS. God’s creation was perfect. But sin has entered the world. Although Yosemite is a place where we can see the beauty and perfection of Creation, it is also a place where the work of sin to destroy and corrupt what God has made is evident. I’ll share that in my next post.