beholding grandeur

It’s my last three days here. The sun went down on the 20^th about 01:56. I have been up for a sunrise this morning as it tries to ascend through the clouds. Sometimes I try to take pictures, but more recently, I have been sitting and watching. The scope of the picture is far to grand to put in a camera lens. Besides “seeing” this view, to really know and understand what it is, one must experience it. It’s a feeling of beholding the grandeur of Creation.

I contemplated this while observing the Royal Society Mountain Range. We see a range from sea level to the highest 14000 foot peak. I realized, as a cloud cover began to settle over their highness's, that in Christian faith, we often see snapshots of what it is to believe in Jesus Christ. We have a photo of what “rules” a Christian life should be lived by; maybe even a person who exemplifies this. We have a thumbnail of church liturgy, we carry a picture of Jesus on the cross in our wallet, or collage pictures of our mission work in a foreign country on our wall as our means to salvation. But, then we miss the big picture sometimes. Sometimes (and for me, I mean most times) we focus so much on the details; the individual stones or layers of earth, that we miss the awe-inspiring majesty of what God created, painfully watched fall, and gracefully rescued and rebuilds in our lives.

So, here I sit, for a moment in time, taking in a hazy unbelievable immense sunrise; the colors and scope of which cannot be described; the shadows from clouds, and precipices far too intricate to capture well on camera. And, here I also simply behold my Christian faith.

Life is made of so many pieces; art, forgiveness, work, mis-communication, deliberate injustices, hospitality, friendship, commitment…my list could go on and on. In high school I took a personality test where the results defined a person as global (seeing the whole picture and caring less about the details) or analytic (understanding and seeking to maintain the individual parts of a project). I was diagnosed as an analytic, but I always wanted to be global. I bring up this illustration, because in life, as in faith, these elements are not mutual exclusive. Strong well-laid bricks will make an impenetrable castle.

Taking this illustration a step further, I have seen a pronunciation of relativistic worldviews regarding faith and religion while in Antarctica. Lots of people here seek “truth” by accepting all forms of deity. This diversity of understanding "truth" has been the most frustrating part of being here. Rather than deliberately placing bricks to build a strong tower, I have witnesses a degradation of many world belief systems; where bricks are chosen from a variety of traditions and merely thrown in a pile of what looks and feels good in the moment. There is a loss of Truth, an apathy towards salvation, and a focus on “self,” rather than God and others.

I don't have all the answers and people on The Ice can tell you I have messed up and mis-communicated plenty; but I have found Truth. Some would argue I have found a faith that “works for me” or fulfills my needs, but that simply makes faith out to be a self-serving feeling.

I have faith that was passed down from my parents and grandparents for generations, based on the Truth that is found in the Bible which is a document, remarkably written in a consistent fashion by multiple authors over many years. This piece of spiritual literature is The Word of God. Its’ focus is not on me, myself, and I. It’s about a Creator and Redeemer. It’s about God reconciling humanity falling to a sinful world; about a God who had compassion on a people-gone-wrong and wanting to still save them. It’s about God sending part of himself in the form of His human Son to carry the burden of all people’s wrongness and suffer a death so that those who accept this amazing sacrifice will not die, but live in a place with God, the Creator of all good things.

After that, there are no issues comparable. They are perhaps analytically important (the rock and soil creating the mountains), but they have so little to do with the broad gratitude and joy and humble service we should be lifting towards God.

So, if we focus on compiling bricks we risk missing the larger castle construction. When we concentrate so hard on what the hills are made of, we don’t behold the mountain view; the amazing Truth, right in front of us.