A Cliff and a Cross

Chapel of  the Transfiguration

In the Grand Tetons National Park there is a little church in a place called Moose. It is a log building with a mighty glass window behind the altar. If you look out the window you see, past the cross in front of it, the rugged Tetons upthrust as a jagged knife against the sky. Psalm 104 tells us how near the end of the flood the mountains rose up and the valleys sank down when it says:

He set the earth on its foundations, so that it should never be moved. You covered it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains. At your rebuke they fled; at the sound of your thunder they took to flight. The mountains rose, the valleys sank down to the place that you appointed for them. You set a boundary that they may not pass, so that they might not again cover the earth. (Psalm 104:5–9)

As I stood at the altar and saw the cross silhouetted against the mountains I was struck by the beauty and power of it. There, in the distance, were mountains which rose up through the waters of judgment. Jagged reminders of a time when God judged the world and His wrath against sin was poured out against it and man. God's Word tells us that there is another judgment coming, and 2 Peter 3 tells us that the same ones who doubt the Flood are the ones who will doubt the coming judgment as well. 

Judgment and the Cross—as seen from the window
behind the altar.

But there, in front of those mountains, stood the cross—the work of God on my behalf that saves me from the coming judgment. It was a powerful reminder that while I was immersed in scenery that left me in awe, my awe was to be toward the one who created Creation, and who died for me. 

It was a timely reminded because I had become so excited by the stunning things we had seen that I realized I was at times more excited about them then the One who made them. The cross and the cliff—mountains of judgment in the back fronted by the cross that my Savior carried up His own hill to die, so that I would not have to . . . Thank You, Lord. May I or my generations until You return never doubt You or Your Word, and may we never be more in awe of Creation than we are of the Creator.