getaway
On a getaway vacation, Kevin and I explore new terrain, hiking through El Dorado State Park in Colorado. El Dorado means the gold or the gilded, a term that became popular in the gold rush days, when at another time people crawled this craggy land looking for the gold veining the Colorado Rockies, living hard, I imagine, in pursuit of wealth. It’s funny how we can do that, wear our dusty bodies down over what won’t last, when right before our eyes stands testimony to what will.
Suddenly, I’m walking along drawing in deeper breaths even though I’m walking up here closer to the clouds, thinking of how God says His words are more precious than gold, than much pure gold; how when He brought His people out of Egypt to their freedom, those who had been their oppressors pressed gold jewelry and fine things in their hands as they left; how scripture reads plump with words like abundance and riches, sweetness and fullness, health and overflowing, all of it pointing to a golden union between God and human beings achieved not according to our striving, but by the lavish love of God. And while this does not mean there will be no hard living in pursuit of Him, it does mean that all the living, no matter how light or heavy, will be gilded with His glory.
Like I said, deep breaths. His Name, Yahweh, sounds like the inhale-exhale of the Wind.
God lately inviting me to ask for what I want, not according to my limitations, especially not the limitations of my faith, but in accordance with who He is, I’m walking that path, inhaling that sweet El Dorado air and exhaling a prayer for more of Him overflowing me.
Down the trail, where one side of the path drops off sheer and tumbles away into a rocky ravine, and rapids rush and froth and fall, an unobstructed view of a sheer, rust-red rockface rises, stealing our mortal breath and replacing it with the breath of life. Ant-sized people scale the massive side of that rock, their ropes dangling and curling, tiny lifelines against a backdrop of power.
Kevin points, gesturing so I’ll see. Wow, they look so small, he says.
The sheer size of that Rock, small in comparison to more distant neighboring peaks, makes me stumble backward against the tree line, even though the path is wide enough for people meandering in both directions, and suddenly, I am Adam, taken speechless by a bigger-than-skyscraper-scaled perspective, thinking about the majesty of God, who is my Rock, whose love and faithfulness outreach the skies.
When finally we stop taking pictures, pictures we agree will never do justice to what we see, when we stop trying to frame up the vastness of the view with people and trees because understanding what’s tremendous goes hand-in-hand with understanding what’s actually, by comparison, quite slight, I’m wondering how many times, how many times, Biblical poetry refers to God as my Rock. Because it feels, in view of this rockface like a sprawling mighty, God-hand taking up the sky beside this foot-beaten path sprinkled with wildflowers, as we gaze at trees growing I-don’t-know-how from nothing but rock, like an endless repeat, a heartbeat, my own heart thudding every time I try to take it in, and I do mean take it in, because I want this view becoming part of me.
My rock, my rock, my rock, my Rock.
It comes out of my mouth like a prayer barely breathed, scattered on that sweet wind like a seed.
David wrote, over and over as he ran from his enemies in the craggy Ein Gedi desert,
“Yahweh is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer;/my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge,/my shield and the strength of my salvation./He is my stronghold, my refuge and my savior—”
and I wonder if maybe sometimes, like I do now, David felt like that view of the wild cliffs would press little him flat to the solid ground in holy awe; if it wasn’t grace, as David was out there getting away, to remember the vastness, the sheer power, of the God who held David’s life and kept him safe. Maybe because of those views, David couldn’t help but sing about sheltering in the refuge of God’s strength, because in ancient Hebrew culture, the tangible articulates truth better than the philosophical, making whole-being comparisons according to what can be seen, what touches and is touched, what imposes and can be experienced in the body.
God is my Rock.
I stop for a moment and stare, gasping, embracing what must be the tiniest experience of proper perspective, before moving along the path marked out for me.
To get away, in ancient Hebrew literature, the way David had to run for his life from King Saul in the Ein Gedi, is somewhat ironically, according to the language, more about walking, proceeding with accompaniment, as if to say that who or what I’m running from must never become as significant, as all-encompassing in my view, as who I’m walking with. Greater is He who lives in me than he who is in the world, and no matter that my arms feel feeble and my knees feel weak, if God–unlimited, vastly powerful, and wildly ineffable–cares for me as His own child.
So here in El Dorado State Park, Kevin and I get away too, but maybe it’s not as much about escaping our responsibilities as it is about coming a little closer to God, about a realignment of perspective in acknowledgment of Him, this always being the better kind of rush, this the heart hunt for truest treasure.
It’s good, I’m saying to Kevin’s back as we set off again on down the path, using God’s own word, good, getting away to this.
I study the ruddy dirt, the vibrancy of flowers dotting the trail like bouquets tossed with wild joy, because I can’t look up, can’t take in that rockface and still walk.
I sound like Peter, that’s what I’m thinking, how drunk with awe over the transfiguration of Christ he said, Lord, it’s good for us to be here, because that’s how it is, maybe, when you first start catching sight of the corner of a much bigger picture and you realize how much there still remains to see and how your eyes, the eyes of your heart, anyway, so often fail you when it comes to knowing the realest kind of real.
All I know is that I want more of it, because when it comes to praying in accordance with who God is, this is the picture on the front of the invitation.
How is it, in light of the Truth, if we really come still to know it, that our prayers can feel so small? When, as the author and teacher Max Lucado once said in so many words, the power of prayer is in the one who hears, not in the one prays. It’s all, it seems to me, the dust of that Colorado path puffing around my feet, the view of that rock in my periphery about to knock me back down flat, a matter of perspective.
Like I said, deep breaths.
Yahweh, my Rock.
