Juxtaposition

September 17, 2013

I sit in the Boise airport alone.  Having traveled thousands of miles to the West to go hiking with my older brother was no mistake, and was quite enjoyable.  We have a hundred pictures, and maybe more of the great mountain ranges we walked through, the lovely pine trees we passed, and even the scarred lands previously burned.  These are the very creation of the God I worship.  Mountains stand as they were placed by Him so many years ago.  One mountain has a red top, others are rocky with crags, and some are covered in pines with smooth slopes.  We walked thirty miles in two days.  Up down and all around.  We tented next to a beautiful lake which reflected the mountains around with astonishing clarity the next morning.  You couldn’t recreate this if you tired.  Hours and hours from civilization- or it would certainly seem- trout bite the lures we cast in the water.  We casted most of them back from whence they came.  God keeps those trout there 8,100 feet above sea level so that one day someone might venture a lure into the lake to see what God might do.  Meals are provided, and God is worshipped alone for such a grand scale, and one yet so small that many people don’t know its there, or are focused on the millions of other distractions in life.

In all of this, I was in awe of my masterful designer, and yet something was missing.  I wouldn’t have said this flying from home to Boise.  Landing in Minneapolis on the way, nothing was different.  Looking forward to seeing my brother and his wife and children along with the spectacular views God might be so inclined to show me was a great anticipation.  What happened?

I realized I was alone.  My brother was there with me the entire time.  We fished halfway around the lake by walking the banks.  We took picture upon pictures, and packed everything in and everything out.  We were responsible.  We cleaned up after another party that wasn’t as clean. We walked like soldiers to accomplish what our minds had set out to do.  So how was I alone?

A single man cannot write what I write.  I was single once.  I’ve been different for years now, and in 7 years, I’ll have lived half my life single, and the other half with another.  This person who has walked a married life with me has always been by my side.  Before we were married she was by my side.  This missing person was noticed in my mind immediately upon walking the mountains.  She is my soulmate, my friend, and one that God himself chose for me.  I wouldn’t ask for another.  She fills my voids, and polishes my unseemliness.  I am no diamond in the rough.  I am the rough, and she makes me look like a diamond.  She is selfless, she is warm.  She is kind, and never judgmental.  She is concerned with truth, and raises our children in the nuture and admonition of the LORD.  Alone in the mountains and seeing the grand display of God himself was dimished by the lack of my wife.  In a strange way, and yet very logical, she surpasses the beauty of the rocky cragged-top mountain, the red mountain, the pristine water of a lake so far above sea level most the world will never see it.  Yet, I see my wife every day, and she seems ordinary because she has always been there.  But Oh!, what God really intended for me to see wasn’t the hills he made.  It wasn’t the trout that is fed by God himself.  It wasn’t the time spent with my brother.  All things are made by Him, and are great, but when God created the world as we see it here-and perhaps with more beauty than we see- he then made Adam.  And God said it wasn’t good that man was alone.  I think I know how Adam felt.  When he saw Eve for the first time, he never wanted to not see Eve again.  My Sarah is that way.

He made the mountains and made the trees, and He made Sarah to set me free.  Free from the trappings of the world.  Free to see what His might truly is by giving me a lovely woman just like he did for the first man. 

Oh, how I pale compared to the mountains and streams!  How far I fall next to my Sarah.  If a mountain surpasses my beauty, how much more does my wife?  Yet, she stays with me, as God’s plan has always been.  I have been given much by the King, and I have a response for Him.

You gave me a woman who heals my wounds. She encourages me when I am down.  She has sought you when I was complacent.  She has delivered  five children because it was your design, and never complained.  She trusted You while our son was in danger.  She disagrees with me.  She has a careful eye to things that I am oblivious to, and I need that, but you knew it, and made her that way.  She teaches our children to love you, and shows them how to train their mind.  She gives her time to me, and asks for nothing back.  She is orderly, clean, and composed.  She avoids things she should avoid.  She lets me be wrong, and doesn’t strike back.  She is better than I, and You made her that way. 

Oh, King of my heart, I thank you today for making a beautiful woman this way.  You designed her and fashioned her spirit and heart to love a man and her children from the start.  You have kept her safe, and her children too, I can only ask one thing of You.  Keep her safe and better than me today and never let her walk away for She is the guiding force of my life, next to You, my Sarah, my wife.