Minutes of Meetings with God and with Myself
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Oh! ... Wow !!!

It was a trip that we almost didn't make and I will admit that it was me who was the one who was the strongest against going. Friends had told us: "you are going to be so close ... you really shouldn't miss seeing it!" But, after all, we were taking a vacation mostly to get some much needed rest and there is no way that a 7 or 8 hour round-trip drive in a car could be restful. Three and a half to four hours out and then three and a half to four hours back and that was only the travel time. It just seemed too much to try to pack into one day and we would have to do it as a one day excursion. After talking to a local tourist information person in Laughlin, Nevada, we decided we were "going to do it". That night, we set the alarm clock (remember, now, we were on vacation and, we set the alarm clock) for 5:30 A.M. (did I say that we were on vacation) and we were in the car, rolling across the Mojave Desert by 6:30 A.M. I was still barely awake and I can't even remember what we did for breakfast or who started driving. It took us about an hour to get to Kingman Arizona and Interstate 40. We headed East on the Interstate, and, with traffic moving at 80 mph or faster, it was not long before we were leaving the desert and going up into the mountains. The road was clear, but there were patches of snow to be seen nearby. When we made a "pit stop" at Williams, Arizona, the temperature was considerably lower than the almost 80 degrees we had left in the desert. It was maybe 45 or 50 degrees. Thankfully, we had taken sweat shirts and jackets along with us. We left Interstate 40 for the 60 miles of two lane highway that was the last leg of our journey out. We tried real hard to lose our way in beautiful downtown Williams but that was all my wife, Susie's, fault because she let me navigate and, Williams is about 3 or 4 times bigger than Maybee, Michigan where I have shown that I can get all turned around very easily. Finally, we drove up to the entrance of the National Park and paid the fee. We did not have to go far to get to the scenic turnout closest to the park entrance. One look at the Grand Canyon and what we had to do to get there was ... was ... was ... nothing. The sight was breathtaking, head spinning (maybe that was because we had gone from about 300 feet above sea level to about 7000 feet above sea-level so quickly), totally awesome. I had seen photographs, and I had heard others try to describe it, but nothing had done it justice. Our first view of the Canyon was (in the best sense of saying it) an "Oh! My God!!!" experience. The Grand Canyon is so vas, so imposing, so beautiful, so delicate, ... so ... so ... (words just aren't enough). Several days earlier, we had been to the Hoover Dam and had taken "the hard-hat tour" that went deeper into the heart and the workings of the dam than the regular tour and it was very impressive. The Hoover Dam is about 2 football fields (600 yards) thick at the bottom. Its concrete wall soars more than 500 hundred feet into the air. But the Hoover Dam was a drop in the ocean compared to the Grand Canyon. In one place alone (a spot called "The Abyss"), the Grand Canyon's walls drop almost straight down for 3,000 feet. We did not stand too close to the edge there. Nothing we human beings have done, nothing we may do in the foreseeable future can match the beauty and the awesomeness of the Grand Canyon. The thought that struck me again and again was. There is a God. Only God could do something like this. The Grand Canyon could not be "an accident" or the product of probability. As we walked along the "Rim Trail" for several miles, we found ourselves almost enraptured with the sights, including a mountain goat perched upon a precipice. The Grand Canyon is one of those places in which human beings can see how God has worked and how God continues to work. The walls of the Canyon hold an easily visible record of how the rock was born, layer upon layer, of how oceans came and went, and of how life (from micro-scopic, one celled plants and animals to huge trees and vertebrates) flourished then waned. The Canyon is so wide, deep and long that vastly different eco-systems flourish next to each other, sometimes one higher up the canyon wall than another, sometimes one further along the canyon floor than another. Seeing the Grand Canyon has helped me understand how one of the Psalmists could write: "For you make me glad by your deeds, O LORD; I sing for joy at the works of your hands. How great are your works, O LORD, how profound your thoughts! ( Ps 92:4-5)" Seeing the Grand Canyon also helped me realize how we humans so thoughtlessly do things that undermine and destroy God's great work and gifts. As the day of our visit stretched on, the views became increasingly hazy. The park rangers said that the haze was caused by the smog especially from Los Angeles. At a learning station located on the "Rim Trail", we read that the smog also contributed to acid rain that did everything from dulling the colors of the rock formations to weakening the plant-life of the canyon. Back in the 1930's, Will Rogers wrote ... Every invention during our lifetime has been just to save time, and time is the only commodity that every American, both rich and poor, has plenty of. Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save. Two hundred years from now history will record: America, a nation that flourished from 1900 to 1942, conceived many odd inventions for getting somewhere, but could think of nothing to do when they got there." It seems to me that, if Will Rogers were alive today, he would also note that we Americans had paid a high price for the time we have rushed around to save. Not only can we not think of anything to do when we arrive where we are going, the contraptions that transport us undermine and destroy most of the things that are worth seeing, whether art and architecture (the human made stuff) or Nature (the God created stuff). Another of the Psalmists penned a petition and a warning that it might be wise for us to seriously consider these days when we are slowly beginning to realize the vast consequences of some of the things we have done and continue to do. "Repay them for their deeds and for their evil work; repay them for what their hands have done and bring back upon them what they deserve. Since they show no regard for the works of the LORD and what his hands have done, he will tear them down and never build them up again. (Ps 28:4-5)"