Over a year ago I flew from San Diego to Anchorage, Alaska for a dear friend’s wedding, with my preferred aisle seat to look below, and I gained a new perspective on much of the country that I’d ridden motorcycles through. I recognized many landmarks, but saw the big picture of our world much better. The higher perspective stunned me frankly, I thought I knew that area pretty well. Then a childhood friend, Susan Munson, shared a post on Facebook about a happy face formed in a forest in Oregon. Here’s the story.
Some time back, two lumber company employees of Hampton Lumber, David Hampton and Dennis Creel, decided to add to the happiness of local drivers, and planted a hillside with evergreen Douglas Fir trees, but with a twist: they included some larch fir trees, which turn yellow each fall. The larch form the overall circle of the face surrounded by the evergreens, but in the face you see the evergreens make up the smiling mouth and wide eyes. It’s become a bit of a tourist attraction on Highway 18 near Willamina, Oregon, one I’ve missed on the bike rides and the plane flight…guess I need to take another ride north to appreciate the effort to add to people’s happiness.
But perhaps this happy face in the forest reveals some deeper truths.
First, seeing the happy face while standing among the trees is impossible, we need a higher dimension and some distance for perspective. That truth also comes in the spiritual world, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9). God’s “God’s eye” view of life gives him a view we just can’t get on our own. But we can build confidence in understanding that a God’s perspective transcends ours.
Second, that grove of larch pines required time: clearing the land, planning, planting, nurturing, and growing. In the same way, much of what God does in us takes time to reveal itself, and we also see that in Jesus’ ministry, “At just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly” (Romans 5:6). God brought Jesus to us “in the fullness of time,” and had a number of steps before the time was right for Jesus to die. Maybe we can nurture patience in our walk with him.
These two factors work together so we can build a trust that God is working when we can’t see it, and will bring it out at the right time. Maybe we can hang in there a little better?
Kick Starting the Application
How impatient do you get with God when you can’t see what he’s working on, and it takes forever? Do you see this as an issue of trusting in his love for you? Might thinking of the larch pine happy face help you nurture trust