Hello, hello is anyone there??

Those were probably his first words… as in the elevator works but doesn’t go to the top floor…

I know the exact moment God tried to reach out to me. God wasn’t trying, God never tries. He always DOES. But I was not receiving. I wasn’t trying that’s for sure.

I was an adult baptism at First United Methodist Church of Richardson, Texas. I was baptized along with my kids Keaton and Sarah. I had no idea what baptism meant at the time.

I knew what miracles God was capable of doing because he blessed even someone like me with 2 beautiful children, so beautiful and perfect that it could only be a God capable of doing something so breathtaking.

But God had been knocking at my door for a lot longer that that.

I know you may wonder why I keep referring to Colorado and being in the mountains, well this is my experience after all. And my moment came in the mountains.

It was the same summer I was working as a counselor in the kid’s camp. With 8,000 acres owned and 40,000 acres leased from the national parks we had a lot of area to roam around on. One of the favorite areas was close to the highest point of land occupied by the camp. There was one specific outcropping that we would climb that was probably an elevation of 9,500 feet. From there we would look due east at Pikes Peak and then south at the Sangre de Cristo mountains in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico. We used to spend a lot of time up there watching the hawks and eagles circle. One day we walked just to the west of this outcropping into a field and saw a brown bear crossing ahead of us. We stayed and watched him amble on for what must have been 10-15 minutes, just awe-struck to experience something so unusual for a human being.

One day while we were up on the outcropping we watched a huge pop-up storm heading right at Pikes Peak which was about 30 miles east of us. This storm was dark and foreboding and had lots of lightning. It hit the north side of the mountain and bounced due west, right at us. Probably moving 60 miles an hour, we got all of the kids off of this hill, all of us running and shouting all the way down to a tepee the camp had constructed. We made it just in time before the deluge and laughed about our good luck getting off of the hill and being safe inside the tepee.

The next morning I went out and caught a couple of trout in the pond by the tepee and grilled them for breakfast. The kids didn’t really care for it, so another counselor and I enjoyed the spoils of the wild.

God was there in all of that wasn’t he? Of course he was.

We were to spend another night in this area. For some reason I was restless. Most everyone else was out of gas and just taking it easy.

So I headed out, past the outcropping, back again to the field where we had seen the bear. It was mid-August, probably around 7 PM, the sun was beginning to set. I pushed through some trees and was beginning to walk into the field when I looked and noticed the sunset for the first time. I was faced due west looking into the sun. The sun had “split” two pop up storms that were brewing. The storm to the south was all oranges, yellows, golds and reds. The storm to the north was all blacks, grays, purples and blues.

I found myself sitting. I was stunned at the beauty of the moment and of the event of two storms coming together.

I have no idea how long I sat there and simply watched the beauty unfold before me.

For years and years I would recall this moment. It was so perfect. It was so pure.

But only recently as a Christain did I understand that sunset was made just for me. No one else was on that mountain, at just that moment and at just that instance of two storm clouds being separated by the sun. No one but God and me.

Psalm 23

The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want.

He maketh me lie down in green pastures…

I’ve had my green pasture moment.

When was your moment?

Do you know what Sangre de Cristo means? It means the “blood of Christ”. This is from Wikipedia when I searched for the meaning of the name: