Life Lessons from the National Parks

April 4, 2012

The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until Shiloh comes.  Genesis 49:10

This week is the 150^th anniversary of the battle of Shiloh, fought in Tennessee on April 6 and 7, 1862.

Shiloh National Military Park commemorates this Civil War engagement with a slew of activities: caravan tours, which take visitors to important points along the battlefield; in-depth hikes to follow the movement of the troops; the debut of a new interpretive film, “Fiery Trail;” and a Grand Illumination, scheduled from dusk to 10 p.m. on April 7, with about 24,000 luminaries placed around the battlefield, each representing casualties from the battle (see details on these events here).

That number of men killed, wounded or missing in just this one battle is more than America had suffered in all previous wars. My cousin Sue sent me this link to a group of Civil War photos from The Atlantic magazine, and while there aren’t any photos of Shiloh among them, they’re a solemn reminder of the war’s devastation.

Side note: Fort Pulaski National Monument near Savannah, Georgia is also commemorating the 150^th anniversary of its Civil War battle. Activities will be held April 10-15, and include a special boat tour. And the National Park Service has a website devoted exclusively to the Civil War, since its sesquicentennial runs through 2015. It’s information about the war all in one place—history, battlefield locations, events calendar, and even a soldiers and sailors database.

But back to Shiloh. In the Bible, Shiloh is the place where the Israelites first set up the tent of meeting, the tabernacle (Joshua 18:1). Within the tabernacle was, among other things, the Ark of the Covenant, which held the tablets of the Law—the covenant—given to Moses by God. Those tablets had been sprinkled with the blood of young bulls as a peace offering, a kind of ritual ratification of the agreement between God and the people (Exodus 24:5, 6; Hebrews 9:18-21).

Exodus chapters 25 through 31 detail God’s instructions for the tabernacle’s construction and contents, while chapters 35 through 40 describe how the people carried them out. After all was done, “the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle” (Exodus 40:34). So when the tabernacle was set up in Shiloh, that city became the religious center of the nation, where God’s presence and power resided.

Shiloh means peace, and indeed many visitors find the Shiloh battlefield a very peaceful place. The National Park Service calls it one of the Civil War’s most pristine battlefields. But on those long ago April days, it was anything but peaceful.

Easter is a nice holiday in our culture. The weather usually is balmy, full of hope for warmer weather to come. Cute bunnies and chicks, bright springtime colors and lots of chocolate predominate.

But the getting to the first Easter wasn’t any prettier than the road to Shiloh was.

This week leading up to Easter, we reflect on the real reason for the season, Jesus’ sacrifice and death. Reading the accounts of His trial and especially His crucifixion at the end of the Gospels (the New Testament books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) do not paint a rosy picture. Jesus was whipped, spit upon, mocked and nailed to a cross to die an agonizing death. Like those young bulls whose blood sealed the covenant in the tabernacle, Jesus’ blood sealed the new covenant (Matthew 26:28). As Charles Ryrie puts it in his Study Bible’s Introduction to the New Testament, “The Old Covenant revealed the holiness of God in the righteous standard of the Law and promised a coming Redeemer; the New Covenant shows the holiness of God in His righteous Son.”  Jesus came “to minister in the sanctuary, and in the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, not man…Not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all having obtained eternal redemption” (Hebrews 9:12).

620,000 people gave up their lives during the Civil War. That was the price of conserving the Union, of making peace. But it took just one Man to bring us our Shiloh, to take on the punishment for all our sins, be our Prince of Peace (Romans 5:12-19, 1 John 2:2, 1 Corinthians 15:21, Isaiah 9:6), the One whom Scripture pointed to from the opening book of Genesis.

Something to celebrate not only at Easter, but all year ‘round!

Comments (1) Apr 04 2012

July 5, 2011

I urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints. For certain men whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are godless men, who change the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord…These men speak abusively against whatever they do not understand; and what things they do understand by instinct, like unreasoning animals—these are the very things that destroy them…But you, dear friends, build yourselves up in your most holy faith and pray in the Holy Spirit… Jude 4, 10, 20

I find myself thinking of Yellowstone these last couple of days, after hearing the news about the oil spill from an underground pipeline into the Yellowstone River in Montana. Fortunately, the mess occurred 100 miles downriver, near Billings, and so will not seep into the park; unfortunately, the spill is larger than first thought, and people and wildlife who live along the waterway have and will be adversely affected.

(Montana’s governor told CNN, “Everybody in Montana will work hard until this is done. We’ll be on it like a stink on a skunk.” Is that a great analogy or what?!)

Then I read an article from Sunday’s New York Times about Yellowstone, and was reminded of our visit there in 2004 (you can see a photo of my family and me there under the About Me section of this blog). We also went to Grand Teton National Park, since it’s right next to Yellowstone.

What a great trip that was! Even though it was August, the weather was chilly and damp most of the time, but that didn’t stop us!

I think the most memorable part of that vacation was our hike along the Norris Geyser Basin, the park’s biggest hydrothermal area (half of the world’s geothermal features are located in Yellowstone). The cool air mixing with the heat created an eerie fog that swirled around us as we traipsed along the elevated boardwalk, checking out the geysers, hot springs, fumaroles (steam vents) and bubbling mud pots (click here for an online tour; go here to see Old Faithful geyser spout off via live web cam).

The most gorgeous spot in Norris Basin, I think, is Emerald Spring. The blue water—the color reflected back after the other colors of sunlight are absorbed—combines with the 27-foot pool’s yellow sulfur deposits (which explains the basin’s funky smell) to make the spring appear to be a magnificent green (my favorite color!).  I’m afraid the online photo just doesn’t do it justice.

These pools of water, though, can be deceptive. The springs especially look so inviting, sort of like Jacuzzis just waiting for you to jump in for a soothing soak. It’s also tempting to poke a finger in to see how hot they really are. But numerous signs caution against it. The water is boiling, the steam scalding. One little dip, and you’d come away with severe burns. Plenty of people have done so anyway, and paid the price, a few with their lives. Animals too—on cold winter days, bison gather near the park’s springs to find warmth, and some slip in. Their bones can be seen in the clear waters.

Danger among beauty—that’s just what Jude, the brother of Jesus, is writing about. As the leader of the church in Jerusalem, he cautioned against a form of Gnosticism seeping in among the Christian believers, which, as Charles Ryrie puts it in his introduction to the book of Jude, “views everything material as evil but everything spiritual as good.” Therefore, they “cultivated their ‘spiritual’ lives and allowed their flesh to do anything it liked.”

This manifested itself as ethical permissiveness, a tendency to think, “Well, I believe in Jesus and am assured a place in heaven, but it’s not really important to follow everything He said to do. After all, the prophet Habakkuk says we live by faith [2:4], and the apostle Paul agrees [Romans 1:17, Galatians 3:11], so I’m ‘covered’ no matter what I do.”

But Paul also addresses this very false idea. He spends the first five chapters of Romans explaining our need for a right relationship with God through Christ, how we can receive it, and how God’s grace and mercy does indeed cover all our wrongdoing. But he begins chapter 6 with this absurd, rhetorical question: “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace might increase? May it never be! How shall we who have died to sin still live in it?” (vv. 1, 2). Our salvation doesn’t give us license to act any way we want—that’s just plain crazy!  A life dominated by flesh (sin) “cannot please God” (vv. 6-8).

No, living to please God is not always easy. Scripture never implies that it is (John 16:33; Ephesians 6:10-12; Hebrews 2:18, 4:15, 16; among others). There will always be temptations, things the world says we should taste and try, ideas and activities that by all outward appearances seem good, but which can be soul and body killers. Like unreasoning animals, Jude cautions, we can wind up getting too cozy with them, with devastating results.

The Bible has posted the warning signs, and given us the intelligence, reason and even the instinct (Romans 1:18-20) to heed them. Will we?

Comments (3) Jul 05 2011

August 30, 2010

Now is the day of salvation. 2 Corinthians 6:2

America is still struggling through economic woes for sure, but I see some hopeful signs of recovery, both nationally and personally. In the past few months, two people I know have gotten jobs after looking for a long time—one of them is my daughter (yay!).

Friday’s New York Times ran an article about how vacation travel is rebounding, but with an emphasis on frugality. That’s good news for the National Park Service (NPS), which expects about 285 million visitors this year. Already, the number of tourists at big parks like Yellowstone, Yosemite and Death Valley exceeds last year’s totals. The Times piece quotes an NPS spokesman as saying, “We usually see an uptick in visitation when times are tough.”

That phrase made me wonder if church attendance had gone up as well, and according to a Gallup poll, it has “inched up” so far in 2010. But the organization adds this caveat:

There has been well-publicized speculation about the possibility that church attendance has risen over the past two years as Americans became more despondent and worried as a result of the economic recession. However, trends in Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index, an ongoing measure of perceived economic confidence, reflect just the opposite pattern, with both church attendance and economic confidence increasing from 2008 to 2009, and now into 2010.

Such correlations do not prove causality, and it is possible that despite the more positive economic confidence, other economic realities such as unemployment could be related to the increase in church attendance. Still, these particular population-level data do little to directly support the theory that people seek out the solace of religion, as measured in religious service participation, when economic times turn tough.

So what does it take for us to turn to God? The first thing is the conviction of the Holy Spirit, that is, as Charles Ryrie explains it in his study Bible, “to set forth the truth of the Gospel in such a clear light that [people] are able to accept or reject it intelligently; i.e., to convince [them] of the truthfulness of the Gospel. The Spirit will help break down the indifference of the typical pagan who has no conviction of sin, who holds a low regard for righteousness, and who pays no heed to warnings of the coming judgment” (from John 16:8-11).

As Ryrie notes, we are free to accept or reject this truth; however, the middle ground—indifference—is a more typical response among unbelievers. The apostle Peter warns of this attitude: “’Where is the promise of His coming? [they say] Everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.’ But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens existed and the earth was formed [and] by the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of [the] ungodly” (2 Peter 3:4-7). In other words, God’s work in creation is proof enough that He does what He says He will do.

But still there are those who will say, “Okay, okay, I get it. But I’ll think about it later.” Have you ever heard the Winans’ song, “Tomorrow” (not the one from the musical Annie)? If you’re not familiar with it, please listen to them sing it on youtube.

No, tomorrow is not promised, as the song concludes.

What God does promise is today, and eternity (Hebrews 13:6, John 3:16).

If you haven’t accepted Jesus as your Savior and as Lord of your life, better choose the Lord today.

For tomorrow very well might be too late.

Comments (2) Sep 01 2010