The holy calling of humanity

I’m seated by a river called Snaring. Clouds pile like white laundry on the mountain faces that surround this Jasper vista. 

The river rushes by and one wonders how a river knows to rush or a waterfall to fall, and that neither ever stops.

My friend and her family are here with us and she tells me how, when she was 10, she would sit watching the falls wash over their banks. Her parents would tell her they needed to leave, to which she would say, “But it hasn’t finished yet!” Like it was a movie and she didn’t want to miss the ending.

I say a reluctant goodbye to the river, now, like he’s a friend, knowing when we come back next year he will be the same – maybe a little higher or lower – but still rushing,still hemmed in by a multitude of white pebbles and green trees and the stern granite profiles of the Rockies.

And I think of how Revelation says God’s voice is the roar of many waters (14:2), how He comes with the clouds (Rev. 1:7), how He is the evergreen which never fades in color (Hosea 14:8), how He draws praise and water from the stones (Exodus 17, Luke 19:40).

And I wonder again at the holy calling of humanity. How each of us is made in the image of the One who never runs out, who never ends, who will never be finished, much like the rivers and the falls.

How He gives us dominion over every squirrel, every mountain goat, every bear, the likes of which rises on his haunches then wanders off, unaware of its awesome breadth and fierceness – and yet, yet: we have dominion.

Over the majestic lion and the humble lamb. Over each delicate flower and each bee who drinks her nectar then lavishes honey like grace upon the world. 

We, who are the freckled and weary, the broken and double-jointed, the young and the old, we are the stewards of creation.

Sometimes I wonder if we forget this in our asphalt empires of smog and screen, in our high rises and pavement palaces – places where the darkness is just that, instead of a backdrop for the star which points the way to the Christ Child.

But if we were to step outside the city gates and stare up at the rigid mountain or stand alone in the middle of a field, we would sense the unassuming breadth of our Creator, much like the bear rising on his haunches. And no doubt many, if not all, of our questions about identity and purpose would be made mute in light of the immensity of our worth.

The worth tied up in being made a little lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor, made rulers over the works of God’s hands – everything being placed under our feet. (Psalm 8)

And all we can say then is, How majestic is His Name in all the earth.