He saw more than I did. I could tell by the way he watched the yard. I tried to follow his gaze, but at the end of it, I saw only a couple of old trucks and some empty lawn chairs.
‘I had hoped to get back there,’ he said.
I turned my head back to see him looking at a poster of Yellowstone on the wall.
A few years past, he and his wife had invited me over for dinner, and when it was over, he said, ‘Enough, dear, you’re boring her to death!’, and insisted I get up and follow him. He clicked through a slideshow of photos he had taken on his treks across the national park.
‘It’s where I’ve felt most alive. It’s the greatest sanctuary on earth,’ he said. ‘Go there. I used to take a group of friends on a trip every year. I’ve taken my sons, and one day, I’ll take my grandsons. Don’t miss it. Go there’.
He’d planned a trip for later that summer. But earlier that winter, he was diagnosed with stage four cancer and didn’t live to see the long July days that would have taken him west.
And yet, sitting on that bench in his small, dark room, when he sat very still, he could see the sanctuary where he had met God and come alive, as if for the first time.
I still haven’t been to Yellowstone, but I have a sanctuary like it, as I’m sure many do. And though my trip to Yellowstone isn’t booked yet, I have taken my friend’s advice from time to time, and I’m better off when I remember to take it often. I go there, to the sanctuary where I can meet God and come alive.
So, go there. Go there when you are afraid. Go there when you are anxious. Go there when everything is as it should be. Go there and find peace. Go there and be grateful. Go there and allow God to re-awaken you to the life that is truly life. Go there and take everyone you know, that they too might know the abundant life God offers.
