By clicking on this SoundCloud link you can listen to today’s PWTE devotion
We experience some pretty cold temperatures in Colorado Springs in the winter as frigid Canadian air makes it’s way into the Pikes Peak region. The advantage of this cold weather is the feeling of privacy you don’t often get when you visit the Garden of the Gods at other times of the year.
Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs, Colorado
For some reason visitors to Colorado Springs don’t think about strolling the Garden when it’s twelve degrees Fahrenheit (sarcasm intended). A place crawling with people in the summer had only four cars in the parking lot when I took this picture.
Though we humans might not find the Garden of the Gods the best place to visit when it’s cold, there are a number of God’s creatures that call it their home no matter how frigid it might be. The hardy human patron will find a number of rabbit tracks, deer tracks, and other tracks scattered throughout the Garden in the dead of winter.
“Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow builds her nest and raises her young at a place near your altar, O LORD of Heaven’s Armies, my King and my God!” Psalm 84:3 New Living Translation
The sons of Korah sing about the beauty of God’s dwelling place. They sing about the temple in Jerusalem and how wonderful it is for them to make tracks to the temple where God dwells.
Do we desire to make tracks to be near God’s altar? I love the beauty of Colorado Springs, the place I am blessed to call home, but greater still is the home where my soul finds rest; in the community of God’s baptized. This is not to say that there isn’t solace in the Garden, but there are gifts you and I receive in the community of God’s people that we don’t receive elsewhere.
What joy to make tracks to the house of God.
Copyright Douglas P. Brauner
Ice climbing analogy. I could watch Mark dance across the ice with ease. When I got on the ice wall my steps were not light tracks. I would beat into it with my axe and crampons thinking anything sharp enough, hit hard enough would stick. I learned to slow down, get rhythm, look for my God given hand holds. Stick it, trust it, move. I related it to the trust you develop on your ice skate blades playing hockey. We recognize it in figure skating but next time you watch a game watch how such power can rest on the very edges of a metal blade and soar across the ice. (Ashley, quit blogging on my blog. )