Of Cornices and Canyons FIJ

 

Faith in Jasper Article: Of Cornices and Canyons

 

I recall reading not long ago about one of Canada’s pre-eminent mountain climbers having summited Mt Assiniboine, the Matterhorn of the Rockies. The exhilarating sense of achievement, the awe of spectacular vistas, were tragically short-lived, as the snowy edge he stood on proved to be an insubstantial cornice that gave way to a terrifying plunge below. Less than solid snow is no substitute for solid rock and because we have substance, what we stand on must also have substance.

 

Consider an ice walk through the canyons between town and Medicine Lake. A few weeks back I took two younger friends into a couple of the lesser explored canyons. James, a U. of A. Engineering student had been in town for 8 months helping with the soccer field project, Arissa is the high school’s new music and science teacher, and together we ventured into the Park’s shadowy, but magnificent, cracks on a bright Sunday afternoon.

 

In the first canyon someone had recently punctured the ice’s skin with their axe. A mushy, robin’s-egg blue layer of slush covered everything, not yet frozen solid. Our boots left deep imprints and scaling the small falls proved a drippier exercise than one would have liked. In the second canyon deep snow covered everything, concealing holes, while the layers of filo-pastry ice cracked and occasionally gave way beneath one’s boots, hopefully to then step down on firmer ice beneath, but not always so!

 

In one canyon the ice was repairing itself, becoming thicker and stronger, but for the time being wet and slushy. In the other canyon insubstantial, fluffy snow was piled over ice shelves with nothing but air underneath, collapsing under our weight. The first conditions might appear to be the superior, the more trustworthy, but in truth, even the rock walls of these splendid canyons bear witness to the fact that nothing in Time, nothing in all Nature, ultimately has the kind of solidity, the unwavering substance, that a human soul requires to bear its awesome weight of being.

 

The curious thing about investing temporal and earthly things with the weight of their own creation and fulfillment, (including ourselves with all our desires, disappointments and distortions), is that we find no true rest or relief for our own heaviness. A suitable foundation must be found.

 

 As I examine the Judeo-Christian worldview - its designed cosmos, the origins and destiny of humanity, and the divine means for establishing us on solid ground through the God-Man, - I become convinced that there are a lot of unsupported cornices in this age, a lot of modern thin ice, just ready to give way. If such disasters don’t prove fatal, there may be many more people re-discovering in the dry and warmth of a God-fearing company of explorers, that the words and ways of the Master are solid rock, indeed.

 

Pastor Richard Bowler

Jasper Park Baptist Church

jpbc1@telus.net