Mountain Building

Earlier this month I visited the Red Rock Amphitheater near Denver, Colorado. Despite the frigid wind which made it hard for me to really enjoy being outdoors, the sheer magnificence of these "rocks", as it were, simply amazed me. I have to be honest though, I didn't really value the significance of these rocks until the other night as I was viewing my photos. As I looked at and really studied these landforms I began to wonder how such things entered into existence.

Thank goodness for the Internet! In a matter of minutes I was able to ascertain the details of these rocks creation. According to the "all trusty" Wikipedia I found out that the Red Rocks are made up of sandstone that had first been eroded and then lifted up by "mountain building due to plate convergence". Um, ok..."what the heck is that?" I wondered. It's been longer than I thought since I last tutored high school earth science apparently. Back to the wonderful search engine box. I found a site called geocraft.com which described plate convergence like this: "Spectacular mountains result from the collision of continental crust as tectonic plates collide, buckling and bunching continental crust along their impinging plate margins. This movement is slow - only a few centimeters a year, but these forces are so powerful that some of the largest mountains in the world were created by this process."

Wow!! It hit me that this magnificent structure was built by first being torn down and then by being built up again and the whole process was torturously slow, if not downright violent at times, in my opinion. Which sounds remarkably like my life at times. I have times where it seems like my life is eroding. The world as I know it comes figuratively tumbling down around me. During these times my faith is being tested....sometimes it seems completely shattered....but it never totally disappears. The process feels rather turbulent, though in hindsight it is completely necessary to break down my previously held misconceptions about life, about who God is, and about who I am in Christ.

Then there is the process of mountain building. Those times when God uses others along the way to encourage me, when the Bible or a message specifically speaks to me or the situation I am going through. The days when I clearly see my prayer requests being answered and when I feel a strength inside of me that only God can give.

This whole process seems long and arduous to me. However, when I take the time to stop and look around me I've noticed my perspective has shifted over the years and that life looks very different now than when the sands first started to shift. Maybe, just maybe, I'm standing on ground that is slightly higher than it once was.

"Great is the Lord, and most worthy of praise, in the city of our God, his holy mountain." Psalm 48:1