Speak to Me Sunday: The Man in the Fog

One morning, in the mountains of North Carolina, Joe and I went hiking. It had rained the night before, so our footsteps made no sound as we walked along a trail carpeted with sodden leaves. The air was cool, but still damp, and a thick fog, or mist, swirled around us. We could not see the path ahead.

The hike was energizing, but my mind, heart, and spirit were tired. We had just come through a pandemic that brought the world to its knees, and travel restrictions, mask controversy, and contentious politics only added to the bickering, squabbling, finger pointing, and protesting, all of it done with the righteous indignation of people serving as both judge and jury against everyone except the person looking back in the mirror. The ensuing consequence pitted brother against brother, friend against friend, city against state, and people against government.

I was tired of all of it. Although the hike was quiet, I knew once we descended the mountain I would be in the real world again. And so I turned inward and began to pray. About nothing. About everything. I was not even sure what I was praying about. My prayer was not neat, or eloquent, but just words exhaled with every step as we silently climbed up and up.

Suddenly, like the parting of a curtain, a man emerged from the fog in front of us. He was alone, carrying a backpack and a trekking pole. We exchanged pleasantries—how are you, good weather for hiking—and then asked if he could give us a book. I hesitated for a fraction of a second and then said, “Sure. Are you an author?”

He was, in fact, an author. As he opened his backpack and pulled out a book, he explained he was also a retired pastor who currently trains and mentors pastoral leaders. I thanked him as he handed me the book, and he said goodbye. When I turned around to see where he had gone, the fog had already swallowed him up.

I looked down at the book. The cover featured a watercolor drawing of a hiker, carrying a backpack and trekking pole, and at the top was the title, Finding Your Place in the Father’s Heart.

The title alone spoke to me, and just like that I realized I had been going about this all wrong. In trying to sift through the turmoil, in my feeble attempts to make sense of a nonsensical world, I had turned inward with whispered prayers and questions, my introspection swirling fog-like until, like the mountain pathway I was hiking, I could not see the way.

But it was not my heart I needed to turn to, but my Father’s, not so much to find answers, but to find myself.

Turning my introspection outward, I appreciated how the fog, while preventing us from seeing the road ahead, did not impede our hike; that the pathway revealed itself with every step I took.

And there, on top of a mountain in North Carolina, on a remote hiking trail engulfed in fog, I recognized this as the dramatic moment that it was. Sometimes parables and beatitudes and morals are adequate to teach and console and show us the way, but sometimes they offer ambiguity and require interpretation when we are simply yearning for clarity. 

Sometimes we need a little drama—a thunderbolt, choirs of angels, the temple curtain torn in two.

Or a man emerging from the fog on top of a mountain in North Carolina.