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.
