The Worthwhile Pursuit of Bigger Souls

September 1, 2006
Michael Evans
  

The Worthwhile Pursuit of Bigger Souls

Once again, we bowed the backpacking knee to the beckoning call of the Wyoming Bighorns this August.

My oldest boys, Benjamin and Luke, along with my buddy Shannon and his son Erik, trekked up the Misty Moon trail having entered from the West Tensleep trailhead. 

For six days we carried with us everything needed to survive and thrive in the mountains. 

We ate like kings, albeit deposed kings of inconsequential kingdoms.

We caught many cutthroat trout and had our fill of gorp.  Luke even caught what appeared to be a civil war era boot in one alpine lake, while in another he caught the largest cutthroat trout I’ve ever seen!

Some in our group got altitude sickness the first day in and would have just as soon died as to take another step. 

But it’s amazing how water, Ibuprofen, and a little sleep can completely alter one’s bleak outlook on life.  The next day all of us were primed and ready to go again.

We took day hikes to places like Solitude Lake, Gunboat Lake, an unnamed lake, the Fortress lakes, and a few others.  Each one was uniquely glorious and worth the effort to get there.

The air was fresh and clean.  The alpine flowers have never been better, and the company was second to none.

As the boys get older, I increasingly appreciate the fact that they appreciate how special these kinds of opportunities are. 

My only regret: Superhero Ranger Matt (see Aug. 2005 Patros Logos) no longer patrols the Cloud Peak Wilderness area in the Bighorns.  I called the ranger station and asked.

The photo on this page is from a day hike to an 11,112 foot high unnamed peak.  What a spectacular view! Grace Lake is in the distance.

Mountains and oceans both have the same effect on me. They are a visceral reminder that I am small and God is large; that I am very limited in ability and that God is unlimited in His strength and power.

It also occurs to me that the best man can do in his incessant quest to “conquer” the earth is merely to travel to the deepest hole in the deepest ocean (seven miles down) and scale the highest mountain peak (Mt. Everest at 29,017 feet).

Both have been done.  In 1960 a manned Navy submersible named The Trieste, descended to the bottom of the Mariana trench in the Pacific Ocean in the Ring of Fire. 

This vessel descended nearly seven miles straight down to the lowest spot on earth where the water pressure equals eight tons per square inch, roughly the same as a human being holding up seven jumbo jets.

Makes you think twice about complaining about the pressures at work, doesn’t it?

The highest spot on earth, by contrast, is Mount Everest.  For fifty grand, you too can bag Mount Everest if you really want it and can run a marathon in two hours.

But one thing we cannot do:  We cannot create a 35,000 mile long mountain range that circles the globe…. underwater with a valley that sinks to a depth of seven miles! 

We cannot create mountains that reach upward into the heavens nearly six miles above the surface of the oceans.  All we can do is bask in the glory of God and His majestic creation.

No one reading this article and no one you know or even that a friend knows will likely ever travel to the bottom of the Mariana Trench or scale Mt. Everest.

But there are things we can do this side of glory to prepare a bit for what Scripture describes as something so great that “no eye has seen, nor ear heard what God has prepared for those who love Him….”

Maybe not.  But when we see glorious things on this earth like Old Faithful spouting off her steam every hour and birds that can dive 75 feet under water and catch fish, and mountains so rugged they just beg to be admired, and oceans so vast and wild that they call us to forget ourselves… then we are seeing some of the best pictures of heaven this world has to offer.

Heaven will not contain whatever is necessary to make each individual follower of Christ happy forever.  Just imagine all the silliness this would create in Paradise restored!

No. The object of heaven is God Himself.  To worship God in His sanctuary, with all the saints and holy angels, will be one of the main eternal and untiring activities of heaven.

However, the book of Revelation also speaks of a new heaven and a new earth and a heavenly Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. 

On this new and recreated heaven and earth, there will also be places to go and people to see!  We will see this new earth, I believe, as it was originally created to be…without mosquitoes and thorns that infest the ground and things that hurt and kill and make life hard and painful.

I suspect that there are far too many small-souled believers in this world whose capacity for great thoughts and visions of rapture are virtually non-existent.

I suspect that our collective capacity for wonder and awe is defined more by the cinematic artistry of Peter Jackson in the latest Lord of the Rings installment than they are by things like the Mariana Trench or Mt. Everest.  This is not as it should be, though good movies can remind us of transcendent realities.

In all of God’s good creation, God Himself is shouting out continually, “I am here!”  “I am majestic!”  “I am the One responsible for every last bit of the order and beauty and symmetry and color on this planet!”

David said it this way in Psalm 8, “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”

God’s imprint is all over this planet.  I’m a six literal day creationist.  Haven’t always been, but I am now.  I believe Scripture clearly points to this position and that the authority of God’s Word is at stake in this fundamental question.

We creationists love to see and hear about the never ending inconsistencies that macro-evolutionists seem to come up with regularly.

The fossil records are read one way by creationists and an entirely different way by evolutionists, though increasingly even evolutionists are seeing the incontrovertible evidence of a major flood being responsible for the massive amounts of fossils in one small moment in time.

Fossil records don’t lie.  A worldwide catastrophic flood is not only the truth, but it’s also the only explanation that makes any sense at all.

So even in events that occurred perhaps six thousand years ago, God still speaks.  His imprint is everywhere!

My question to you is this: What are you doing to help both yourself and your children taste and see the wonder of God in His imprinted creation?

Is your soul becoming more and more expansive with each year that passes or has it shriveled up like corn leaves in a drought? 

Perhaps you’re somewhere in between, but I challenge you to expand your world view…a different kind of world view.

Perhaps this is a view that is as close as your own back yard as you get down on your belly to look at a grub up close in his own territory.

Or perhaps it’s taking the kids on a walk at the local nature center.  It might even mean taking the family on a memorable trip to some of the world’s most picturesque places.

The point is this:  If you want to have a soul that prospers in this way, planning is a good thing.  Plan to take those walks.  Plan to see those sights.  Plan to take a little longer look…a better look at the critters at the zoo.

You don’t need a lot of money to have a big and expansive soul.  In fact, I would venture to say that the less material wealth a person possesses, the greater is the probability that he or she will experience the simple wonders of life.  

I suppose if I really wanted it, I could figure out a way to buy a really cool $7,000 outdoor play set for the kids. 

But to watch Elisabeth and Gabbie (along with the neighbor girls Sarah and Tiffany and Rachel) the other day using thirty or forty chunks of rotten landscaping timber and other scrap wood to construct their own make believe world was priceless.

Their capacity for wonder and awe is increased because of things they don’t have and their capacity for wonder and awe is often lessened by what they do have.

Does anyone out there really believe that endless hours of Game Cube and the like is going to produce creative and big-souled adults who have a passion for God and the things God tells us that He cares about?

Big-souled people aren’t born.  They are created over time.  As children become more saturated with Scripture, as they see a consistent biblical world view lived out before them, as they daily experience the little glories of God’s creation, and once in a while the big ones, they will be on pace to become something more than the norm. 

As C.S. Lewis said in The Weight of Glory, “We are like little children who are content to go on making mud pies in a slum because we can’t imagine what a holiday at the sea is like.”  Lewis suggests that we are far too easily pleased.

Making mud pies is actually pretty cool.  I’m not against them. However, when 40 year olds are still making them because their souls have not increased in maturity with the rest of their bodies, that is a tragic state indeed.

I urge you: let the sails fly!  Open your eyes!  Smell the flowers! Stare at the mountains!  Be still before the vast oceans!  Taste and see that the Lord is good everywhere at all times and in all places.  And may your soul’s capacity for grandeur ever increase!