the value of being

I spent the last two weeks driving around the states of Wyoming, Montana, and Utah.  As much as my summer trip hiking the Appalachian Trail had me marveling at the macro-lens beauty in the flowers and fauna around me (consider the lilies), this trip had me captivated, reveling in the incredible majesty of the rugged, snow-capped mountains, treacherous rims and breaks, piercing blue skies, rolling fields as far as the eye could see, and the all-around vastness of the American west.

By time I was preparing for my flight home, I felt tears threatening.  It wasn't so much because I was sad to go home; I mean, I missed my pup dreadfully! #petmom  Rather, I felt so full of the beauty and glory, that I was overwhelmed almost to the point of shutdown.  Maybe I'm weird, I don't know, but I felt like I didn't have any more room for the feast of colour and wonder that surrounded me.  I suppose if I lived out west, I might become less affected in about a decade or so, but on this, my first trip to the region, it was all-encompassing.

Sometimes people talk about the sense of being small and insignificant when they are surrounded by the expanse of stars in an open sky or the craggy peaks lost in the clouds.  King David the poet wrote a psalm expressing this very thought, a feeling I have shared. Psalm 8:3-4 

But on this trip, I carried a constant sense of being seen and known in the midst of the grandeur.  I  could almost hear the divine whisper, "Yes I made all this loveliness, and I made all the loveliness of you, my most precious, valuable, amazing piece of art.  You are more treasured than all the stars in the sky, more significant that the highest towering peak.  I see what I've made around you, and I zoom in on your heart and soul.  As you marvel at the mountains, the angels marvel at you."

I have wrestled with the notion of my worth for most of my life.  I know many people share this struggle, and wonder, "Why am I here?  What good am I?"  On this trip, in the sweeping vistas I somehow caught a glimpse of the value of my being:  simply because I exist, I have worth.  How's that for something to wrap your brain around?  Try it... simply because YOU exist, you have worth.

Because I believe in God, I believe in more than the happenstance of the Big Bang.  The more I see of the world in both broad view and close-up, the more convinced I am that there had to have been intention behind the formation of the universe.  But my belief in God also leads me to cultivate a relationship with Jesus Christ, his son, and that's where my comfort in being known is found.  I take solace in knowing that the hand that paints the glory of a sunset, holds my own hand, and that I am loved. 

consider the lilies

For our 25th anniversary, my husband and I went hiking for a week in the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, along the Appalachian Trail.  The hours of quiet, the breezes, scents, sounds, and views were like water to my soul.  The hard work of shouldering a 30+ pound pack on the up-and-down of a steep and rocky terrain, allowed me to enter into a kind of meditative state where physical pain simply rolled in and out of my consciousness, duly noted and fading as I walked, thought, prayed, and listened.

We saw so much beauty in the sweeping vistas and in the macro lens, but it was the macro that got me thinking one day.  I love taking pictures of flowers and mushrooms, snails and butterflies, snakes and chipmunks, all the fascinating things we see in nature.  I wanted to stop at every third step, to snap and share the beauty of creation with others.  As we walked through a narrow tunnel of tall wildflowers, I felt almost an obsession to take a picture of every one, and then I got to thinking about the flowers on the other side of the hill, where there was no trail, and I wanted to find them and take pictures of them as well, even though I knew it wasn't possible.


What struck me that day was that the beauty in this world IS.  It's just here.  Not because of us or for us.  There is a daisy in a field somewhere that I will never see, just as gorgeous as the one in front of me at this moment.  No human eye will ever see it, and yet its beauty remains.  I'm filled with awe at the reality that MOST of the beauty in this world will go unseen by the human eye.  Why is it there?  What is its purpose?



I think there is one who sees every flower, every blade of grass, every humming bee.  The Creator of the beauty, he sees all of it and loves it.  Something about this makes me...content.  Maybe it's just freeing and refreshing to remember that everything is not about me.


There is a verse in the Bible that says, "Consider how the wildflowers grow: they do not labour or spin thread. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendour was adorned like one of these." Luke 12:27 CSB  


 I rest in the knowledge that nothing in the universe goes unnoticed.