On Monday, a group of 30 of us traveled up to the Carpathian mountains on an excursion. It was nearly the perfect day — gorgeous weather, unbelievable scenery, great friends…so, so beautiful on every level. Fall has always been my favorite season and I would rather be in the mountains than on any beach or forest anywhere, so I was absolutely in love with what I saw.
We kept driving and we came to a tunnel through the mountain. It was like the kind you see in movies — old-looking and rustic. Again, I was struck with the thought that, “Somebody built that! How would you build that??”
The kind of manpower and effort it would take to tunnel through a mountain — especially a tunnel as old as this one looked — is unthinkable to me. Where do you start on a project like that? Who swings the first pickaxe? Who looks at that mountain and thinks, “This is where I’ll build my tunnel”?
Then we got to the top. And this was waiting for us.
If God can create such beauty, such masterpieces of power and perfection and drama out of dirt and rocks — what can He do with me? If He cares so much about his natural creations, how much more does He care about His children? If God can make dirt so beautiful and so inspiring to look at, what more can He do through me?
Recently, God has been leading me through the process of being in a process. I’ve been learning just how much of an instant gratification person I am, how I just want to say a prayer and move on and be done with my specific struggles. It’s not that simple. This month in Romania, God has been whispering that there is beauty in the process, that there will never be a final point, a culminating moment that says I have arrived and peaked and reached the pinnacle of the woman He created me to be.
More than that, though, He has been reassuring me that process is a good place to be — that the expectations that I put on myself to be instantly freed from all of my struggles do not apply to the way He looks at me. When God looks at dirt, He sees mountains and when He looks at me, He sees Jesus. He does not ask that His children attain Christ-likeness on their own; He wants to build us into it and change our hearts in order to change our behaviors.
I don’t want to be so enamored with man-made stone walls that I miss the mountains this year, and I certainly don’t want to spend the year slaving my way up the mountain, toiling on my own wall when God wants to carry me to the mountain top. This song by Gungor has been endlessly perfect for me lately and it came to me as I stared at those mountains….God makes beautiful things out of dirt — so what does He have in store for us?
PS: [Shameless plug alert] I will not be using my computer for the coming week and I would really appreciate your prayers for my squad as we travel to Moldova. It’s going to be a long, hard week of community-building, and your comments and emails are some of the most encouraging things for me to read over here. I would love to come back to my computer at the end of next week and get your love!! I love you guys — thank you for your constant support and prayers!
