Beauty in the Wilderness

After a long Monday of uphill climbing in the Rocky Mountains with a forty pound backpack strapped around our hips, battling off swarms of mosquitos and hot sun, we collapsed at our campsite.  The thirty minute bustle began as students pulled sleeping bags and tents and sacks of food and clothes and wet wipes out of their bottomless backpacks. We staked up our tents and huddled around a campfire to share life stories, warm cups of hot chocolate, and homemade sweet and sour chicken made over a little whisper stove with wind chill whipping around us.  The weather in Colorado is a lot like Texas: bipolar and extreme, with blazing sun during the day and frost around on the grass at night.  This is also comparable to our emotions – crying during the hike (not actually…well, maybe a little) and giggling over card games and silly stories in the evening.  We had several nights containing both tears of empathy over life stories and tears of laughter over inside jokes.  

Our peak day, Wednesday, ended up being more of a plateau day, but we reached the top nonetheless.  Brittany and Matt, our trail guides, woke us up at the crack of 12:20 am, and we choked down some granola and headed up the mountain in pitch darkness, our paths lit by an array of stars, the shiny red dot of Mars, and our strapped-on headlights.  The walk was a bit surreal, and I think our sleepy, dreamy state combined with the rocky climate made it seem like we were trekking across another planet.  We made it to the top of our plateau at 3:30 am, earlier than anticipated, so we laid out our sleeping bags and slept until sunrise.  At 5:30 am the sun began to peek over the landscape, and likewise our students’ heads began peeking out of their sleeping bags to gape at the sun.  Matt read Psalm 104 aloud, proclaiming

“Lord my God, you are very great;

You are clothed with splendor and majesty.

The Lord wraps himself in light as with a garment;

He stretches out the heavens like a tent

And lays the beams of his upper chambers on their waters.

He makes the clouds his chariot

And rides on the wings of the wind.

He makes winds his messengers,

Flames of fire his servants.”

I believe that moments like this made the physical trials of our hike completely worth it.

There is nothing like experiencing the vastness and majesty of nature that really puts God into perspective.  There is a quote by C.S. Lewis that says,

“I believe in Christianity as I believe the sun has risen; not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

Most of our students have been exposed to the Gospel and the story of God’s creation, but it extends to a deeper level once we are in the wilderness of Colorado.  When our students are able to see nature through God’s lens, they can begin to grasp God’s character. They can look at hefty mountains and see His mighty strength.  They can feel rushing rivers and be swept away by His mystery.  They can peer up at tall trees and become conscious of their smallness.  They can gaze up at massive skies and feel the breadth of His love.  Even if our kids never gained any grit, never ate any of their meals, never shared their whole life story or learned more about one another, our prayer is that they would at least have developed a stronger relationship with the Lord.  That they would understand a bit more about how much He loves them and How much grander He is than any of the junk that happens on this earth.

I asked one of the girls on my trip to give me one word to describe the camp food and one word to describe the scenery.  Her response was better than I could’ve hoped for:

“The food was actually okay.  At the moment it was gross but now that I look back at it, it wasn’t that bad.  Everything was so amazing just spending time with you guys and being around the fire late at night and the beautiful stars.  I started to miss it when we got back to Dallas and everything is just so loud.  Now we’re just stuck with all this social media and everything else.  At the moment I hated how we didn’t have service but it was a wonderful break.  Then I find it really hard to connect with God out here.  The alone time in the mornings was my favorite part.  I really loved the experience we had.”

What a gift to see her grasping for a connection with God in West Dallas like the connection she felt in the mountains.  These are the kinds of seeds we love to see being planted.

Mercy Street Leadership Intensive Program has successfully conquered another week in Colorado!

This blog post was written by one of our Sr. Interns, Katie Kelton. Katie will be a senior at Texas A&M in the fall.