Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: Write an INSPIRATIONAL or DEVOTIONAL piece (04/26/07)
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TITLE: Sycamore Canyon | Previous Challenge Entry
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05/01/07 -
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The Canyon’s entrance is in a remote, uninhabited area in the desert. It’s not like a mountain that you can see from a distance. It’s just there when you get to the right place. The hike down wasn’t difficult, at least not for a 19 year old. Very few people were down there, and each kept a very respectful distance from the others. We would meet from time to time at a swimming hole where we would dangle our feet into the crystalline clear water and watch the trout, unafraid in their unfished waters, nibble at the air bubbles clinging to the hairs on our legs. In the late 60’s and early 70’s this included the legs of the ladies also.
Most of the time was spent alone, however, swimming, hiking and drawing. The red rock walls of the canyon reflected the sounds of the birds, sometimes strangely and eerily, sometimes beautifully and wonderfully. The lush vegetation, watered by the stream along the bottom, produced shades of green that I remember to this day—a brilliant, vibrant green that defied the heat of the desert sun for the few hours the sun was directly overhead between the tall canyon walls.
My creativity screamed to be let out in that intense beauty, so I wrote poems, painted and drew. On the road I drew in charcoals and pastels. I remember trying to sketch the canyon walls and being struck dumb by the realization that there was nothing I would ever possibly be able to create that could even come close to the beauty that was already there around me.
There was nothing that I could create that could compare to what was already created. Perhaps you have to understand the height of my youthful arrogance, the depth of my illusioned mind concerning my life's possibilities. Or, perhaps, you only need to remember your own youth with its unlimited optimism. Realizing that whatever I might produce in my life artistically paled to what was already before me, humbled me. I did not return to the God of my youth at that moment. There was more God would need to do to humble me, to make me ready to realize my need for Him, but He wonderfully prepared me by sparing me any more delusions of my own over significance.
Isn’t it amazing that, like Solomon, we must first come to the conclusion that we are worthless without Him—failures without His leading, purposeless without His will guiding us—before we can truly accept His offer to make us His adopted sons, co-heirs with Christ? ”I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit” Ecclesiastes 1:14, KJV.
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