Trails, Rivers, Mountains, and Joy

My guest column in the Newport News Daily Press was published today. I wrote it during the last week of my mother's life, while she was still (apparently) in great health. It hadn't occurred to me at the time to think of the painting in Mom and Dad's living room. Mom had looked for a painting like that for a long time, and when she saw it, she said, "That's it!" and bought it immediately.

The painting is of a trail through a forest. My column begins: "Every trailhead, every path through the woods, is irresistible to me."

In view of that connection, I'm making an exception to my policy of not posting a copy of my column here while it is still running at the newspaper's website.

Every trailhead, every path through the woods, is irresistible to me. I just know there's something around the next turn in the trail, or over the next hill, waiting to be discovered. It draws me, it leads me in further, even though I don't know what it is - or especially because I don't know.

I've been a trail-walker all my life. I could call myself a hiker, unless the word brings a serious camping backpacker to mind. My limit usually has been about 10 miles a trek. But even here at my desk, in air-conditioned containment, just the thought of climbing a wooded hill gives me some of that same thrill of expectation that I feel on the trail.

I get the same sense standing at the edge of the sea, especially if the surf is rough and noisy, the sky is gray and the beach is lonely, with seagulls squawking. There's something out there, far beyond reach: a whole ocean, another land far out of sight. The mystery and beauty of it pound into the soul with every wave.

These are some of the things that most satisfy my soul, and yet leave me with a longing sense of incompleteness. Actually, I know what I'm looking for around the next turn in the trail. I'm looking for the whole forest, all of it. At the edge of the ocean, I'm looking for the whole ocean. At the foot of a hill, I desire the whole mountain. They are all beyond my capacity. I love them, and I know I will not have them.

I approach the woods wanting to encompass it all, yet knowing I can only take it in a piece at a time. I can only look closely, breathe deeply and take in as much as is within reach, knowing how little is my capacity for more than that.

I know I'm not the only one who has felt this. Something like it was a major theme in the life of C.S. Lewis, according to his autobiography, Surprised By Joy. He considered it, rightly, a sign of something beyond ourselves.

All the best satisfactions are incomplete. This is not from any inadequacy of the forest or the ocean; it is because of our own lack of capacity to contain all their beauty and glory. All the greatest satisfactions are a promise that there is more. All of them come with the poignant sense that we will not realize all that there is.

I speak here of the satisfactions of nature. We could say the same of a great musical concert or movie or book; there's always more there than we can grasp. We could say it far more of loving human relationships. Who of us can say we fully comprehend, or ever get all we want of being with the ones we love?

Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, "He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end."

Beauty comes to us in its season, yet we long for more, to find out all that there is that God has done from beginning to end. This, I am sure, is one purpose for eternity. Every one of these delights is a glimpse of God himself, who made them. C.S. Lewis took these moments of joy as markers on a path toward discovering God and as signs that we were made to wonder at Him and to seek Him. I feel genuine sorrow for those who do not see God in these moments, and for those who have not accepted the invitation from Jesus Christ to join him for an eternity of such joy.

For it will take an eternity to grasp all the joy that God has prepared for us. The moments we catch now are but a preview.

Posted: Sat - August 19, 2006 at 08:54 AM |

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Trails, Rivers, Mountains, and Joy

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson