The Earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it,

for God has founded it on the seas and established it on the rivers.

– Psalm 24:1-2

Fellow Travelers,

We made a covenant, the four of us, before embarking on our 10 hour road trip to Montana for our Family Reunion—no trolling on phones; no ear pod escapes; no checking on Instagram or Facebook feeds.  Instead, we’d endeavor to engage with one another in old fashioned ways—through conversation, music sharing, and pointing out features of the land around us.  As we traveled through the diverse terrain that makes up the great states of Washington, Idaho, and Montana, one compromise aided and abetted our desire: episodes of the Geology Bites podcast, to which Kai had introduced us. 

As we rolled through Central Washington’s vast basalt fields—remnants of serial lava upwellings that took place from 17 to 5 million years ago—we were wowed by the gorgeously austere landscape and the chapter of Earth’s story it told. And as we wound our way through the Columbia River Gorge, and along the Clark Fork River north of St. Regis, and traced the contours around Flathead Lake, images of great ice age mega-floods flashed before our eyes.  As we listened to geologists from around the globe describe Earth-shaping phenomena, the 538 road miles from our West Seattle home to our Whitefish destination peeled away, and we became party to the drama of Earth’s fascinating history.

“The Earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it,” sings the psalmist, “the world, and those who live in it, for God has founded it on the seas and established it on the rivers.”  Yes, planet Earth has a story—one older by orders of magnitude than the human story; one that bears God’s fingerprints. And uncovering that story has become, at least for me, an exercise in humility, for we homo sapiens have gotten in the habit of consuming more resources per year than planet Earth can produce.  Not only that, but the pace by which we outstrip these resources has increased markedly over the past 50 years. Bringing awareness to this truth is a start.  Changing well entrenched habits and reversing the trend is essential.  What will enable us to do so?

On our return trip from Montana we stopped, as we always do, at the Columbia River Scenic Overlook, on the east side of the Wanapum Reservoir and the little town of Vantage—home to the Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park. Tens of millions of years ago, this region was humid and the topography was a network of streams and hills. There was not yet a Cascade Range and moisture-laden clouds sweeping inland from the Pacific created an environment where a diversified forest thrived.  Between eruptions of basaltic lava flows, lakes and marshes formed and forests grew. With each lava flow, the forests were destroyed and some logs were petrified—examples of which are visible today.  It was close to 100 degrees when we stepped out of our air-conditioned car to approach the cliffs high above the river, and hard to imagine how the stark scene before us could once have been the site of verdant forests, streams, and hills. 

Transformation on a geologic scale takes millions and even billions of years. Transformation on a human scale happens more quickly. But human transformation is primarily an interior process, taking place within us.  The gospels testify to the kind of transformation that becomes possible when we put our trust in Jesus Christ and follow him on the way.  It’s a transformation that’s not always easy—the shaving off of rough edges, the shedding of self-indulgence and ego—but we can be assured that our Lord is with us for the long haul, for that is his promise to us; a promise sealed in the waters of Holy Baptism. Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881-1955), Jesuit theologian, philosopher, geologist and paleontologist once wrote: “We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new… Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be. Give our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete… Above all, trust in the slow work of God.”

This is the Divine invitation of the Baptized life—to give ourselves to being shaped the forces of grace at work in, with, under, and through us. This is the true ground of our hope, which makes all things—including changing long entrenched habits—possible.  It’s our journey with God.  It’s our journey with each other. 

With you on the Way,

Pastor Erik