Solutions December 2017 | Page 21

Andes or the waters of the South
Pacific? English painter Lilias Trotter
burst into tears when she first saw the
Alps, overcome by their beauty; will
we weep or shout or stand speech-
less when we see them reborn?
Oh yes, we will
recover wonder.
Stasi and I honeymooned in Yosemite
National Park. We had never been
in that majestic valley before, and
we arrived late into the night, after a
long drive, collapsing into bed with
no idea whatsoever the cathedrals
that rose all around us, the valley
John Muir described as “extremely
rugged, with its main features on the
grandest scale in height and depth.
. . . Benevolent, solemn, fateful,
pervaded with divine light, every
landscape glows like a countenance
hallowed in eternal repose . . . pulsing
with the heartbeats of God.”5 I woke
in the morning a little groggy and
stepped out the back door to have a
stretch; thundering down thousands
of feet before me roared Yosemite
Falls. All I could do was yell, “Stasi!
Stasi! Get out here!”
What will waterfalls be like in the new
earth? What of the giant sequoias
or tender wildflowers? What will rain
be like? And think of your special
places; imagine what it will be like to
see them in their glory. How sweet it
will be to revisit treasured nooks and
vistas, gardens and swimming holes
again, see them as they truly “are,”
unveiled, everything God meant
them to be. Part of what makes the
wonder so precious is that while it is a
“new” world, it is our world, the world
dearest to our hearts, romance at its
best.
John Eldredge is an author, a
counselor, and a teacher. He is also
president of Ransomed Heart, a
ministry devoted to helping people
discover the heart of God, recover
their own hearts in God’s love, and
learn to live in God’s kingdom.
Taken from All Things New by John Eldredge. Copyright
© 2017 by John Eldredge. Used by permission of Thomas
Nelson. www.AllThingsNew.com.
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