Can I find beauty in my wilderness journey?

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Can I find beauty in my wilderness journey?

#ValleyofBaca #GodintheValley

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Psalm 84:6 “Who passing through the valley of Baca make it a well; the rain also filleth the pools.”

Two days in the wilderness surrounding the Grand Canyon can be an eye-opener. That’s especially true if the people with you are gifted photographers.

Our friends, Larry and Eileen, are both talented, interpretive photographers, and they know the Grand Canyon well and visit it often. So it was interesting to see it through their eyes as well as through our own.

The canyon itself is huge, approximately the size of Delaware. Because of its size alone, it’s impossible to take it all in at once. I could have stood in one spot and just let the panorama of that majestic view overwhelm me. It’s impossible to describe a place like that…a place of rugged beauty so great so that it demands deep breaths and quiet contemplation.

We watched the sunset and sunrise from different locations, and there was great beauty at both. We watched the graceful condors and drank in the beauty of God’s handiwork.

However, when we changed our focus and looked at what Larry and Eileen were doing, we were amazed. While our attention was completely centered on the vastness of this barren place, Larry and Eileen were snapping pictures everywhere else. And what we saw as barren, they photographed teeming with life. And it was…teeming with life, I mean.

There were chipmunks, the largest, fattest squirrels I’ve ever seen and birds of so many varieties that I lost count. There were elk and deer eating the few blades of grass that were there. And there were flowers and moths that hovered like hummingbirds to pollinate those flowers.

The harsh, unyielding beauty of the canyon so demanded our attention that we couldn’t see the smaller, but equally beautiful parts of that wilderness. However, I know it was there because our friends captured the images on film. And when I looked at the things they pointed out, I saw them too It reminded me that there is also beauty to be found in my spiritual wilderness if I can just look at things a little differently.

Our Creator God gives beauty to everything He touches. . . even the wilderness that seems so harsh and ugly when we are looking at it through untrained eyes. But there was much more going on around me. I was too inexperienced and overwhelmed to see it.

It’s the kind of limited vision that caused me to write the words, “For on the ground, surrounded by the rain/with vision limited, I see my pain/But I can know the sun shines way above/and I rest in God’s unchanging love.

The valley of Baca has come to mean a place of sorrow, a time of weeping, a wilderness of the soul. That sad valley is a harsh and brutal place. I’ve been there, and you probably have been too.

You might even now be in your own Valley of Baca, and the size and apparent barrenness of that wilderness may be overwhelming. But don’t give up. You really are going to come out the other side of your valley, whether it feels that way today or not. Meantime, there’s beauty to be found there if you and I will just open our eyes and look for it.

Challenge for Today: What might happen if we, just for today, looked for the wonder in the day even if the day isn’t wonderful?