524 Finding God …Again
Since I was the height of a door knob, I’ve wanted to discover two things: a lost treasure of ancient coins and God. Because I was raised in northern Idaho on the Canadian border my chances of finding ancient coins was remote. Nevertheless, I spent hours excavating old garbage dumps, abandoned homesteads and store floors. My biggest find was 56 cents on Stan Dehart’s drug store floor. The coins weren’t old but they were lost.
Finding God wasn’t much easier. The closest church was too far away. Radio and television evangelists couldn’t reach me either. We could barely get a radio station at night, much less a television signal. Not that it mattered; we didn’t own a television when I was nine years old.
So like ancient coins, I set out to find God on my own. I had heard God was up in heaven so I figured I’d head in his direction. Mom, who was used to me spending entire days fishing or playing in the mountains, didn’t bat an eye when I packed a lunch and took off one summer morning as the sun was inching its way over the mountain tops.
Several hours later I arrived at my destination, the top of Sugar Bowl – a mountain just across the Canadian border from our house. There were no trees on the top of Sugar Bowl so I figured I’d have a pretty good chance of finding God up there.
I didn’t hear or see God – and yet I did. From up there our tiny town of Eastport (population 100, with dogs and cats) was now tiny physically too. Our house looked like a school lunch milk carton and our car a tiny matchbox toy. When I looked out the world extended beyond my imagination. Like waves on a lake, the mountains flowed on and on until finally fading into a smoky haze. My world in the narrow valley had been much too small.
God also became more real. Everything was so big and impressive. To make it all God had to be even bigger and more impressive. He obviously had more to deal with than just me, and yet I felt like he was looking straight at me and talking directly to me.
I continued to climb mountains and talk to God until I graduated from high school. Then I entered that big world beyond the haze. Some years later I became a Christian and started learning about God from books and sermons instead of mountains and sky. I attended seminary, became a pastor and started a church.
I got busier and busier doing God’s work. The more books I read and sermons I preached the more certain I became about who God was and how to follow him. But as the years turned into decades, my faith began to fade. Without realizing it, I had moved into a narrow valley of faith not unlike the one I grew up in. My concept of God wasn’t as wrong as it was small. I had lost my childhood perspective of just how big and amazing God is.
So lately I’ve been climbing mountains and exploring beyond the horizons. I’m reconsidering Jesus’ words, “Unless you accept God’s kingdom in the simplicity of a child, you’ll never get in” (Luke 18:17). And though I still haven’t found that treasure of lost coins, but I just might be finding God – again.
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