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The Speech

--Here's the speech I gave in chapel. Yes, there's a lot of simple sentences, but it as a speech and my audience was junior high boys.--

My understanding of God comes from my understanding of love and joy. Sometimes I am startled by joy, in the same way that I am startled by God’s love. This is the story of one of those times.

When I turned 20, I went on a journey to discover the world and to discover myself. I joined a group called AmeriCorps, which is similar to Peace Corps. I traveled the US doing volunteer work. I worked very hard and was very poor. I taught at a jail for teenage girls and I came home each night with an exhausted heart. I worked on an environmental conservation crew and spent my days chainsawing trees and clearing brush. I came home each night with an exhausted body. I was very proud of myself for living so selflessly. I thought God must be happy with me too.

Then something bad happened. I was attacked. My body was trespassed and harmed. I was terrified. I had to deal with police and lawyers. I was terrified and distraught. I hid in my room for an entire week.

I was also confused. I didn’t understand how God could let something bad happen to me.

After seven days of isolation, I knew I had to come out of my room and face the world again. I was still very angry with people – so I decided to go to the mountains.

I was living in Denver, Colorado. There are huge mountains in Colorado called the Rockies. It was winter and I knew the mountains would be freezing, but I had my trusty truck and I was determined to get out. I opened up my map of the Rockies to look for a place to go. I saw a campground named Kelsey Creek. My first name is Kelsye! I knew that’s where I should go. I threw my tent and sleeping bag into my truck and drove into the mountains.

It started to snow on the climb up. Big white snowflakes the size of my fist covered my windshield. I had to keep my wipers moving very fast so that I could see the road. I finally made it to Kelsye Creek Campground, but there was a big gate across the road. It was closed! I couldn’t get in.

I didn’t know where else to go, so I drove down a narrow service road near the campground. The snow was getting very deep. It was hard for my truck to keep going. It was getting dark and I couldn’t find a good place to camp. I tried driving up a snow covered hill and my truck got stuck. I rocked backwards and forwards to try to free myself from the deep snow. The truck wouldn’t budge. I got outside to check out my dilemma. It was almost dark and I didn’t really know where I was. I was alone and stuck in the freezing mountains. I finally managed to shovel some of the snow from behind my tires, get my truck moving, and head back the way I had come.

I spotted a place to camp that I had missed before. I stopped the truck and got out. Near where I was parked was a large outcropping of boulders. I climbed on the top of the highest boulder to see if I could see the main road and figure out where I was.

The view from the top of the boulders took my breath away. I could see all the surrounding mountains and the valleys and a big winding river. The sun was setting and layers of red and yellow stacked up on each other, making the snow glow like gold. I sat down on the boulder and wrapped my arms around my knees. My cheeks burned with cold, but I didn’t move. I watched the sun disappear behind the mountains and the sky turn from gold to purple to black. I watched the stars come out one-by-one until the whole sky filled with celestial light. I felt peaceful and calm. I didn’t feel alone, even though no one sat with me on that lonely boulder. I felt as if God was giving me a special show of incredible beauty so that I would know that he hadn’t forgotten me.

After a long time, I returned to my truck. It was too cold to set up the tent, so I curled up in my sleeping bag and tried to sleep in the cab of my truck. I had never spent a night without heat in such a cold place. I was very unprepared. The cold was so painful that even though I snuggled in my sleeping bag with layers and layers of clothes on my body, I still shivered and my fingers were too stiff to bend. I didn’t get very much sleep. Every 45 minutes, I would have to turn the truck engine back on to use the heater to thaw myself out. It was a long night.

At about 4 in the morning, I decided there was no way I would get any more sleep and that I should just get up. It was going to be light soon. I stumbled out of the cab of my truck and stretched my stiff body. Then I saw a flash of color on the snow. An animal! A cat! A BIG cat!

My first instinct was very wrong. I was so excited from seeing the wild animal that I sprinted towards it. The animal turned and dashed away from me. It was a big cat with spots on its fur and black furry tips on its ears. Its paw prints in the snow were bigger than my boots. A bobcat! I quickly realized how stupid it was for me to be chasing after an animal that could probably eat me if it so desired. I stopped running and I watched it bound away from me, my heart pounding.

Bobcats do live in the Rockies, but their numbers are dwindling and they are very rare to see. Some men spend their entire lives living in the Rockies and still never see one of the cats in the wild. I was so happy that I laughed out loud. What a gift God had given me!

I hurried into my truck and zoomed down the mountain to my friends. I couldn’t wait to tell them what I had seen. I even contemplated pulling over at a gas station just so I could run inside and tell the clerk that I’d seen a bobcat. I was desperate to share my experience with anybody! That night, after I had gotten home and had told every one I knew about seeing a bobcat in the mountains, I laid myself down in my bed and quickly fell into a peaceful sleep, the first peaceful night of sleep I’d had in a week. The joy of God’s gift to me had startled me out of my sadness. I could no longer disparage when I knew that we live in a world created by a God of love.

End prayer: Dear God, may we all find strength to endure challenging times and may we continuously experience moments when we are startled by joy and reaffirmed in your love. AMEN.

posted by Scribbler @ Tuesday, November 23, 2004