On the Journey with Monty Newton: “If the Rock’s Too Heavy…”

I tried something last month I’d like to do again periodically, and that is feature a column written by a friend or family member.  John Kiemele of Seattle area's Selah Center helped me kick it off in October. I’m going to now call this column On the Journey, and it will only happen as often as I can convince someone to share some writing on a nature theme with me! If you want to take a try at it, or if you have done something in the past you’d like to share with other like-minded seekers of God through nature, be in touch with me and let’s see what we can do.

Today I want to share something with you written by one of my longest-term and dearest friends, Pastor Monty Newton, soon to be retiring from Heritage Bible (Covenant) Church in Arvada, Colorado, one whose writing and preaching I’ve always enjoyed. Among the many things Monty and I have in common is our love for the reflection afforded by nature’s silence and solitude, and maybe even for a certain little cabin in the northwoods of Michigan where we have found such a gift. He wrote this several years ago for his church newsletter, and I thought you’d enjoy it. Be blessed with its message.

In August I drove thirteen hundred miles to a little lake located about fifteen miles northwest of Watersmeet, Michigan, which is about a hundred twenty-five miles east of Duluth, Minnesota. I have a friend who owns a cabin there and he has graciously allowed me to use it for study leaves and vacations.

My first visit, he sent me a little guide for using the cabin, which included how to get there, how to open up the cabin, unshutter the windows, turn on the gas and light the pilot, and where to find the panel to turn on the electricity and the pump for the well. He also warned me about ‘the rock.’

The rock was submerged in about five feet of water just off the end of the dock. Apparently when the previous owners built the dock they either did not know the rock was there or were unable to remove it, so… divers beware! When my brother-in-law and his son, and my son Corky came up for a weekend from the Twin Cities, I cautioned them about the rock before they went in. Naturally, everyone then had to dive in and check out this monstrous water hazard.

Corky was somehow able to get a hold under a corner and budged enough to discover that the rock seemed to be fairly flat on the bottom side. I am tempted to give you the blow-by-blow description of the ensuing battle between the man and the rock, but suffice it to say Corky refused to be defeated by it. In the end he was battered, bruised and scraped, but the rock now rests at the shoreline.

I thought of that rock this week when someone stopped by my study to chat. It was not an easy discussion… Some questions are not all that readily answered, and we both felt a bit frustrated by the fact that the mystery was still a mystery. That’s when she said something to the effect, “Maybe it’s like what Pat says her mother used to say when she didn’t understand something – ‘If the rock’s too heavy, let it lay.’” If the rock is too heavy, don’t pick it up. I think that is one of the most profound statements I’ve ever heard.

There are things that mystify me. In that I am cynical enough and curious enough, I generally rather enjoy poking around in ideas, concepts, questions and issues that I cannot quite get my mind wrapped around. As an amateur theologian I am intrigued when I hear someone suggest things like the Holocaust was the judgment of God against the Jewish people, or that the terrorist attacks in 2001 were God’s judgment against the moral and social sins of the United States. How did, does or will God deal with the issue of sin and judgment?

Or how about questions regarding the sovereignty of God in predestination, foreknowledge and election, and the free will of man? Does God decide who goes to heaven and who does not? Do we have any say in the matter? Or how about, if we all, i.e., Christians, Muslims, Jews, etc. pray to the same God, how can we say that Jesus is the only way to heaven? How could God let anyone suffer and how could a loving God let anyone go to an eternal hell? Why are children born with birth defects? Why is it that all are created equal but not all are equal? When we die, do we go straight to heaven? What is heaven anyway? Where is it? How about hell?

The questioner in Job 11:7 asked, "Can you solve the mysteries of God?" The prophet Isaiah in 45:15 says, "The Lord works in strange and mysterious ways.” And God tells us in Isaiah 55:8-9, “My thoughts are completely different from yours and my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.”

So it is… Sometimes we can wrestle with the rock until we finally get it to shoreline. But sometimes we just have to let it lay.

Thank you, friend Monty.

~~ RGM, November 13, 2015

Blowin' in the Wind: Webcams and Nature 365

(Blowin’ in the Wind is a regular feature on my blog consisting of an assortment of nature writings – hymns, songs, excerpts, prayers, Bible readings, poems or other things – pieces I may not have written but that inspire me or have given me joy. I trust they will do the same for you.)

I’ve a different kind of Blowin’ in the Wind post this week, an alert to direct you to three timely online nature resources you can check out while the checking is good.

For several years I’ve followed a couple of live web cameras online that take me into the very nests of two of my favorite critters -- eagles and loons. Webcams can be fascinating things. Some time ago, I followed one for a while that brought me to a small pond in Africa where many a beast came for respite and drink. Once in a blue moon there’d be something dramatic to see, but usually it was just the simple and routine lives of animals coming and going, not unlike if a camera were propped somewhere in a corner of your kitchen to view the pedestrian things that typically happen there! One of the things I loved about that webcam, though, was that no matter what was being viewed, there were almost always jungle sounds, especially at night when the camera screen itself may have been dark. What a fantastic, relaxing drone as background for winding down for the day!

The eagle-cam is located in an aerie in northeast Iowa near the city of Decorah. (One of the things that is fun for me about this webcam is that I had the privilege of helping plant a church in that city some years ago, and I enjoy imagining the parent eagles hunting somewhere there along the Upper Iowa River or flying high over old friends.) Aeries can be huge, six feet or more in diameter, with the parents, who mate for life, adding more and more branches each year until it can weigh a ton or more. Inevitably the nest comes crashing down out of sheer tree fatigue, which we have seen numerous times in the northwoods. This year in the Decorah nest, three eggs were laid in mid to late February, with all three eaglets successfully hatched about five weeks later in late March. They’re nearing a month old at this point, and the last I checked a couple days ago fresh rabbit was the menu du jour. Things will intensify as the three grow, start jostling for advantage, and begin to fledge. This particular site even allows you to search archived video of significant moments in the family’s life, and that of past families, by hitting the ‘About the Eagles’ button on the right. Hit this link to see live video, even at night.

By contrast to what you can see today on the eagle-cam, all will still be still on the loon-cam with the possible exception of waves lapping against the nest – it’ll be some weeks before the loon parent occupies it. And there’s way less drama anyway in a loon nest than the eagle’s, simply because the chicks will not be raised in it; in fact, they can leave the nest the very day they are hatched, or will spend no more than a day or two in it. Then the whole thing will never be visited again until next year, and it’s solely lake life for the family until flight lessons in late summer and departure for winter before the lake freezes over. But the lack of nest drama is more than made up for by the simple and unique loveliness of the bird! For now, though, be patient: you won’t see the nest occupied until mid-May at the earliest; once laying takes place, both mom and dad (who also mate for life) will take turns keeping the eggs warm for about twenty-eight days before chick birth. This loon-cam is located on a man-made floating nest island in a lake somewhere in central Minnesota, an area where we once lived. (How appropriate… The state bird of Minnesota, after all, is the loon.) Typically, a loon nests in a secluded spot on land or atop a muskrat lodge, but floating nests have been created in some areas to increase chick survival by providing nest sites completely isolated from possible adult loon or egg predators (coyotes, bobcats, raccoons, weasels, snakes, etc. – it’s a jungle out there!). With this particular webcam’s image, and depending on the time of day that you look, you can even see the shadow of the camera mount sweeping from side to side across the nest. Here’s the link to this site.

I said I had three resources. The third is also something quite unique, from the camera of outstanding nature photographer Jim Brandenburg, also of Minnesota. Though I was acquainted with Brandenburg’s stills, he has taken thousands of hours of video, simple seasonal scenes, and with a producer from France edited a daily video of one minute or less duration that is called Nature 365. He is posting a video every single day this year, appropriate to the season. One can easily subscribe to receive a daily link via email; it’s always one of the very first things in my inbox each morning, and I’ve found it a delightful way to start my day, especially on days when my schedule might require me to be nature deprived! My sister Carolyn directed me to this site back in early February, having come across it somehow, and I have been watching ever since. All the videos are archived, and since Brandenburg typically follows a theme for several days at a time (the activities of a wolf pack, for example, of migrating swans or cranes, or simply of a river’s ice melting and breaking up or dry winter grasses waving in the breeze), you can go back and check out the archives every seven days or so and find particular things for which you might want to have a more complete look-see.

Getting behind some of the scenes of nature in remote places… We don’t often have an easy opportunity to do that, but it’s a perspective these three web resources provide. God asks Job in Job 39, “Is it by your wisdom that the hawk soars, and stretches her wings toward the south? Is it at your command that the eagle mounts up, and makes his nest on high? On the cliff he dwells, and makes his home, on the point of the cliff, and the stronghold. From there he spies out the prey, seeing it afar off... Shall he who argues contend with the Almighty? He who argues with God, let him answer it.”

Though God’s ultimate questions to Job can only be directed back to God, Who alone has the power to direct his creation, we at least get a chance to have a look at things we might never get a chance to see.

~~RGM, April 24, 2015

Blowin' in the Wind: "Indescribable" by Laura Story, And the Enigma of Suffering

(Blowin’ in the Wind is a regular feature on my blog consisting of an assortment of nature writings – hymns, songs, excerpts, prayers, Bible readings, poems or other things – pieces I may not have written but that inspire me. I trust they will do the same for you.)

OK, this song has been around for over ten years, but in singing it again in church this past Sunday I could put off no longer finally addressing it here on my blog. Its lyrics and music are by Laura Story, but it was popularized by Chris Tomlin in his 2004 album Arriving. And given the unfortunate ‘flash in the pan’ nature of some popular CCM, Indescribable has showed itself to possess the staying power marked by a truly great song. Hit this link to listen to it while you read on. And here are the lyrics so you don’t have to watch them on the YouTube video (unless you want to – there IS some nice nature photography there but the lyric display is a little distracting).

From the highest of heights to the depths of the sea,
Creation's revealing Your majesty;
From the colors of fall to the fragrance of spring,
Every creature unique in the song that it sings,
All exclaiming,

Indescribable! Uncontainable!
You placed the stars in the sky
And You know them by name!
You are amazing, God!

All powerful! Untamable!
Awestruck we fall to our knees
As we humbly proclaim:
You are amazing, God!

Who has told every lightning bolt where it should go?
Or seen heavenly storehouses laden with snow?
Who imagined the sun and gives source to its light,
Yet, conceals it to bring us the coolness of night?
None can fathom.

Indescribable! Uncontainable!
You placed the stars in the sky
And You know them by name!
You are amazing, God!

All powerful! Untamable!
Awestruck we fall to our knees
As we humbly proclaim:
You are amazing, God! You are amazing, God!

Indescribable! Uncontainable!
You placed the stars in the sky
And You know them by name!
You are amazing, God!

Incomparable! Unchangeable!
You see the depths of my heart
And You love me the same.
You are amazing, God! You are amazing, God!

(not our photo)

All right, it’s a good song. The lyrics are strong, the music memorable, and it grabs nature nuts like me. But I’ll tell you why I’ve had such a hard time writing on it, sometimes even singing it: it’s the first line of the second verse -- I’ve a friend who was actually struck by lightning and almost killed, that left him impaired, and the first time I sang it after that happened I could hardly hold my composure when we got to that line. I had not thought about it quite like that before, and could only imagine what my friend would think about it. And every time I have sung it since I cannot fail to think of him.

Now, this is not a place for a full discussion on theodicy, but, for me, the song surely raises the issue. And with the new tornado season in full swing of late, and newspapers and websites eagerly reporting every single natural disaster that occurs around the world, it brings up the stark reality that nature is not all sweetness and light, chirping birds and spring tulips. It also has the power to destroy farms, towns, villages and cities and the people that occupy them.

When Gail and I visited Japan in March, it was revealing to us to see how intimately the entire culture lives in consciousness (not necessarily fear) of earthquakes, and particularly of the ongoing suffering resulting from the tsunami that slammed its eastern seaboard in 2011. Besides lightning, earthquakes and tsunamis, there are floods, volcanoes, hurricanes, tornados, straightline winds, mudslides, asteroids, meteorites, wildfires, avalanches, droughts, hailstorms, and all kinds of other natural whatnot considered ‘acts of God.’ One can carry this all the way down to mosquito bites. (Interesting how sunsets, refreshing rain, night and day, the miracle of agriculture, the wonder of childbirth and all the other beauties of nature are not spoken of similarly as God’s acts; guess God only gets the credit when things go badly.)

Does God allow suffering? He certainly seemed to in Job’s life. If anyone has ever been ‘struck by lightning’ without dying it was he. But it is significant to me that after Job had lost his possessions, his family and his health, and was in danger of losing the only treasure he had left, his faith, that God called Job to take a good look at nature in order to regain his viewpoint. When Job was at an impasse of understanding, God spoke to him with the reminder, “Was it you who formed this incredible earth?” Nature has the power to hurt, for sure, but it also, exponentially more so, has the power to heal.

There’s no question that suffering is a part of our normal human experience. Jesus himself said, “In this world you will have trouble and suffering; but don’t be afraid, I have overcome the world.” Elsewhere he reminded us, “God causes his sun to shine on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” And though these words may not bring much comfort when in the throes of pain, the inference is that a time will come when we will understand, and, as Job, see it in perspective. Indiscriminate suffering will always be hard for us to grasp, yet there is constantly One who walks with us “…through the valley of the shadow of death,” who understands suffering intimately and bears us on.

Nature has the power to destroy, but

also has the power to take us by a

hand and lead us back to God…

So do I actually believe God has “…told every lightning bolt where it should go?” I guess I do. Nature has the power to destroy, but it also has the power to take us by a hand and lead us back to God when we have experienced destruction in our lives. It’s a double-edged sword to be sure, but it cuts way more gently from one side. Time and again, far more often than not, nature will redeem us from our grief.

And the song? Though I still think of my friend, it doesn’t trouble me any longer to

 sing passionately every single line.                       

~~RGM, May 3, 2014