The Landscape is Calling Us

[HKHaugan]

The Landscape is Calling Us

 I see a star in the east.  It is the only star in the breaking light of the morning sky.  Yes, every morning recently when I go out for my early walk there it is, the star in the east.  It is a reminder of a star appearing that wise men followed to find someone who was wiser.  Someone outside themselves who would be an answer to a search. But let’s digress for a moment.

 There are those who ponder life trying to find an answer to the unanswerable.  There are those who lock into its emotional variety to feel they are alive.  There are those who measure life in terms of what it can give them who set a goal and let nothing stand in the way of reaching it.  There are the curious who sift its daily experiences and try to figure a way to control it.  There is a gamut, a long strain of searching for what life means and the core that makes it work.  That gamut has a beginning and an end in the life of every person.  When you put life in the cross hairs of your mind, dissect it and make some conclusions about it, it eludes the wisest of the wise, the brightest of the bright and the heart of the most feeling heart. 

 The ultimate mind, the ultimate heart and the ultimate spirit is every person’s search.  Therein is the gamut, the spectrum, the depth and breadth of where we are when we really get down to the basic reality we call life.  It is more than the most brilliant mind can fathom, the most emotional heart and most mystical spirit can grasp.  Life is that invisible sense of being that makes a mind’s language wordless, renders emotion as a bobbing apple never to be bitten but to be bitten by, and its mystical mystery a spiritual breeze just eyond the moment of its realization. 

 Neither philosopher, scientist nor theologian; their tepid inquiries only confuse and increase the wonder of it. They can do no more than simply recognize it and yield to the substrata of its demand to accept it for what it is.  That is, it takes a step beyond the one thing that no human mind likes to accept, we individually within ourselves, know that we will never understand it, nor will we ever be in control of it.  It comes and it goes.  There is a beginning to our personal existence and there is an end to it.  What happens in between calls for an answer from outside of us.  There is only one avenue to take and the one most refuse to accept, faith. 

 We have to be willing to step outside ourselves, looking above the inner mountain and valley into the rare atmosphere of believing, trusting, that there in this other dimension, lies an outer reality of leaving control behind and leaping into a perfection no one can attain until that leap is made.  The willingness to submit one’s self to the truth of this reality is both its most impenetrable barrier and its most welcoming openness.  The barrier is the mountain of the heart’s fear and the valley of the mind’s pride.  We can walk the tight precipice of a mountain’s ascent to prove ourselves fearless.  We can meet with the poorest in the valley of the poor and tell ourselves we are good, kind and humble.  Neither conclusion is true.

 Deep within we know who and what we really are.  Alone, afraid and desperate for what we will never achieve until we look and face our self-isolating fear and pride. Fear is the mountain and  pride is the valley shouting to me that I am the master of my life.  I am in control.  But pride and fear have a root.  They come from the sin within I refuse to accept and its aloneness that makes me inept.  Until I see that I am a reckless nomad charting a path in an endless wilderness.  It will remain such until we walk into the unknown, the unseen, through the darkness, in faith that a light awaits.  Not a physical light, but a spiritual Light.  Not a sun, but the Son of God.  Not a star but the star in the east pointing to their Creator, the Seeable in the unseen, the Perfection we could never feel, the Mystery we could never solve.  To lose control is to find control, His control. 

 To yield our soul is to become whole. Who we are is what we were made to be, images of a God I can’t see and a child of Him who loves me. 

There through the valley and the mountain traversed where my aloneness was a living curse, the Light of Jesus made it clear, the reason why He called me here. 

By faith each step brought something new, what seems so apparent came into view, my life here would be a shadowed past to a new life that would always last.   

For me to teach and pass along what I was given loud and strong, His Word to come alive in me and in the Spirit would set me free to be in Him and Him in me, a relationship into eternity. 

Do I understand it all?  Far from it.  This life is my created part for a journey of the heart which I believe I’ve just begun to make a start.

 In the early morning, step out while it is still dark.  The landscape is full of shadows and sounds.  But look above to the east.  You’ll see a star.  Ponder in that moment what it has meant, where you’ve been, where you are and who you will follow in the next moment and the day ahead.

 As Jesus said, “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it (Mt.16:25).”