by Pastor Douglas Brauner

A Hope to Build on

Watching YouTube videos can be dangerous to your gas budget.

I happened upon a video listing ghost towns on the eastern high plains of Colorado. When most people hear about Colorado they think about fourteen thousand feet mountains, ski resorts, and extremely expensive cities.

I like the eastern high plains. There are no mountains, no ski resorts, and no extremely expensive cities attracting Hollywood celebrities. There are wind, dust, and little vegetation. It’s hard to understand what drew people this place, the backside of moon.

Wild Horse, Colorado is a hundred miles due east of Colorado Springs, closer to Kansas than to the mountains. Little information exists about Wild Horse on the all-knowing internet other than it was established in 1869 and burned in 1917. Residents rebuilt a portion of the town, but now all that is left is a post office and a few residents among the ruins.

“By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
Genesis 3:19 English Standard Version

These words, spoken by the Lord to Adam, also speak to us. The crumbling buildings of Wild Horse follow the same course of our bodies. They are returning to dust. It will take a bit longer, but eventually God’s creation will reclaim this land.

How amazing it is to think that the moment the Holy Spirit conceived Jesus in his mother’s womb, he shared our dust. He was going to die. The clock was ticking. He would stop breathing, hang limp on his cross, and be carried to a grave.

Unlike the city of Wild Horse, you possess the hope that the dust which is our bodies will rise from the grave. This is not make-believe hope, a Disney movie of sorts, but a larger than life promise of God made to you in Jesus’ resurrection. The dust never reclaimed his body.

It was a humbling, gas guzzling drive for me to Wild Horse, but it was also a wonderful ride into the promise of God.

Copyright Family of Christ Lutheran Church, Colorado Springs, Colorado