You just have to know where to look

 

When the plane landed in Denver, darkness and rain bathed the airport, the city, and the hotel. The flights from Duluth and Minneapolis had been long but uneventful. I was the last of the six pastors and two seminar leaders to check in. Rather than follow my usual course discovering the layout of my surroundings, I simply followed the clerk’s direction to my room, turned off the air conditioning unit, unplugged the in-room refrigerator, hung a towel over the red microwave indicator light at the end of the bed, figured out how to undo the professional short-sheeting job on the king-sized bed, changed clothes and climbed in for a restless first night’s sleep. The mountains would have to wait until morning.

At 4:30 a.m. Mountain Time, I was wide awake. It was 5:30 a.m. in Grand Marais; not an unusual time for me to be awake and getting ready for the day. I prepared for the day, and then sat at the desk in the room and spent a couple hours reading, praying, and doing some research for Sunday’s sermon. And I waited. I waited for daylight to seep into the room around the edges of the room-darkening draperies that didn’t cover the window quite tightly enough to darken the room.

It was a second-floor room. The view should be amazing. Denver. Mile High City. Rocky Mountain high. Colorado! Not the Andes, or the Alps, or the Himalayas but mountains nonetheless. Rugged, snow covered crags rising in breath-taking beauty, regal monarchs of rock and stone conquering the heavens, enthroned on the horizon with roots in the foundation of the earth. I waited to open the curtains. I waited to be amazed. I waited for my first glimpse of a landscape I had heard of, dreamed of, but never seen before.

The moment came. Sunrise. I stood from the desk and turned 90 degrees to the window. I took hold of the two plastic curtain retraction rods and pushed them in opposite directions. I was ready to cast my eyes on mountains.

There was a dog walk and a fence. Then a parking lot. Then a road. Then another fence, this one damaged by a truck that had not seen it in the night and that had not yet been repaired. Then a field, freshly plowed and layered, I would find out shortly, once I stepped outside, with a fresh anointing of organic mammal fertilizer. Then another road and a railroad track, then houses, then more fields, then Nebraska.

The view from my east facing window was a landscape as flat as any in South Dakota! Not a mountain, not a bump, not even a septic mound as far as the eye could see. Jim Carey, in the movie “Dumb and Dumber,” summed up my disappointment, “John Denver lied!”

I left the room for breakfast in the hotel atrium with the other workshop attenders. Over salty sausage links and COVID-protocol egg rounds I mentioned my dashed anticipation. One of the guys was a local. He set down his cardboard coffee cup filled with hotel coffee, a liquid mixture between Starbucks and jet fuel, and said, “Come with me.”

We walked out to the parking lot, the west parking lot. The empty lot that offered an unobstructed view of snow-covered peaks in the Rocky Mountain range. There they were, mountain peaks kissed by clouds and blanketed in snow. It was glorious, just like I thought it should be. Bo clapped his hand on my shoulder as he turned to head back in to finish his breakfast. “You just have to know where to look,” is all he said.

“You just have to know where to look.” Many of you are disappointed these days. You are looking for a God Who is wise, Who keeps His promises, Who lives up to His reputation, Who fulfills His own self-revelation, Who loves gladly, and helps kindly, and does justly. You have heard of Him but you see the world around you getting worse, the people who claim to know Him looking and acting more like the world around you than the world you’ve heard of, and you’re tempted to conclude with resignation, “Somebody lied.”

Allow me to do for you what Bo did for me. Let me show you where to look. If you want to know the God Who made you, Who has a plan for your joy and hope, then look at Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Jesus said, “I and the Father are one.” He affirmed that He said and did exactly as God the Father says and does. He is God in flesh. Turn to the Bible, find Jesus and you will find the God you’ve heard of, the God you are looking for. You may or may not find the one true God in the world, or, sadly, even in the church these days, but if you really want to find Him, then you will find Him in Jesus Christ, whom you can find in the Bible.

It’s not that God isn’t present or doesn’t exist. You just have to know where to look.

Each month a member of the Cook County Ministerium will offer Spiritual Reflections. Pastor Dale McIntire has served as pastor of the Cornerstone Community Church in Grand Marais since April of 1995.