Into the Wild at Heart

After some reflection, I think that going out into nature for a while is like God's version of Take Your Child to Work Day.

I took a road trip last summer that went through 33 days and 15 national parks, from Houston to Yosemite. I was expecting that with an experience like that, God probably had a whole curriculum of neat things He was going to teach me, and I was eager to let the epiphanies begin. Instead, I saw a bunch of mountains and deserts and forests and canyons. But what breathtaking, jagged mountains, and what immeasurable, bleak deserts, and what intricate, vibrant forests, and what dizzying, textured canyons. And through the whole summer, I think God was showing me two things: a) that when cooped up in a car with two other guys for over a month, I turn into a jerk, and I really needed to learn to compromise and loosen up, and b) to admire His workmanship. Which makes sense, right? We so often think of God as a teacher, or as a savior, or as something that fits our immediate, specific human needs that we forget that sometimes we are stepping into the studio of an Artist, who is pleased with His work, who "saw that it was good," and who wants us to be pleased with it too. And I was humbled that out of all this natural splendor and savage, untamed wilderness, man, in spite of all of our polluted sinfulness, is still God's favorite, the "apple of His eye." (Deut 32:10)

I think it's impossible to witness and experience God's creation and not commune on some fundamental level with God. Here's one reason to consider. I've recently come to the conclusion that for almost every person on Planet Earth, the worst thing in the world is to be alone. It's something that occurred to me moving to a new city with no friends or connections. No one wants to be alone. The common definition of spiritual death, the result of sin (Romans 6:23) is "eternal separation from God," and even though that phrase isn't directly biblical, Isaiah 59:2 posits that our sin makes us very alone, without God. Being alone, unloved, is the worst thing in the world.

I just finished the book Into the Wild, which is about a 23-year old guy who graduated from Emory and treks off into the wilderness by himself to find himself, the "dominant primordial beast," as Jack London articulates it. But people who trek off into the wilderness by themselves - and I think I know because I have a bit of this bug in me too - go off not to be alone but to struggle, to experience, to master and to be broken by the savage power of God's creation and His unbridled power and beauty, without the distraction of other people or cheap bangles. Any story of man versus nature is not a story of solitude, but at heart a story of man coming to terms with God's creation, majesty, and mystery.

If being alone is the worst thing in the world, and I think it often is, then being out in nature, standing tip-toe on a mountaintop, stretching to venture as close to the Creator as we dare risk, is the opposite of being alone. How can you say otherwise, when you've just come back from perusing the Artist's studio?

Also, Job 38.