When Men and Mountains Meet
This article comes from a member of Finding Noah, a documentary chronicling the journey of an intrepid group of explorers searching for the final resting place of Noah's Ark.
Great things are done when men and mountains meet. - William Blake
Finding the Depth of Man
The tag line for Finding Noah reads: “Beyond myth, science, and faith lies something deeper.” But what exactly does that mean? If time can only tell what eternity has to say, what is the depth of this statement trying to tell us? What can be so deep as to be beyond even our faith? Can myth become fact? Will science someday give way to the supernatural? How can eternities weight thin time into what the early Celtic Christians called a “thin place” – a place where anything can happen in time because it has already happened in eternity? These deep questions can drown a shallow man. But there is hope beyond hope for all of us. There is depth in the heart of every man that only eternity can fathom. We live in time, but we are made for eternity. When hope only hinders and faith fails, love alone prevails. Hope helps. Faith believes. Love knows. The bridge from hope and faith to love is an act of grace apart from us.
Finding Our Purpose
And from the place where grace dances among the glorious ruins of our original glory, we discover this: We are all Noah. We are all searching for the same mystery that filled a man with marvel (Genesis 6:8) while a world drowned in madness. In Finding Noah, God’s mystery disguises miserable monarchs as mythic mountaineers. We climb misery to find our message. When we find Noah, we find what is most true about ourselves – we’re all exiled kings in a foreign country, wandering a wasteland of wounds who must climb our own Mt. Ararat – “The Painful Mountain” to discover our purpose. Pain encrypts purpose. Find your pain to find your purpose. Your destiny is formed and and most often found in suffering. The same is true of your heart. It is the chamber where eternity resides (Ecclesiastes 3:11). The true and greatest journeys are always within. Everything you need you cannot see unless God’s grace has first opened the eyes of your heart to a secret kingdom only the child within can enter (Matthew 18:3).
Finding Ourselves in God's Mystery
We know from Proverbs 25:2 that God’s glory is secrecy. The glory of monarchs is the search, so God’s majesty is revealed not in mastery but mystery – a mystery that answers our unanswerable questions with God’s unquestionable Self. Mystery that cloaks itself in the shrouded mists of a mountain’s hallowed halls and ragged ravines rustling with the rumor of a King’s return and with it our original glory as well. This same mystery crowns white, wispy peaks with a crown and robes shoulders with majesty as if they were our own. What else can transcend the savage within to crown us as nobles and give us a new and numinous name except the love of God to us as His beloved sons? Love is the mountain that conquers us as we climb towards God. We are climbers not criminals. We must descend to ascend and heal. Nothing heals in thin air. We are patients not prisoners. Pain is more than punishment. We hurt to heal. We cannot heal if we cannot feel. Guilt convicts and hurts to heal. Shame condemns and hides to harm. Guilt is good. Shame is bad. Guilt says you’ve made a mistake. Shame says you are a mistake.
Pain therefore is the passport that takes us to places pleasure has neither the courage to go nor stay. It bends our will so we are formed into the beautiful likeness of God's Son. It breaks barriers so we pass without sound into a great silence. A silence so deep and profound it can only be shattered by the same silvery voices that sung like morning stars when time was only a wrinkle on eternities face. Pain is heavens salty tears dripping into our wounds made by weapons that have both wrought and wrecked us with wonder. It is the final portal we must pass before we enter into paradise where death drowns in dreams of life that never end. Do we know anything before we suffer? Hardly. Death is the final suffering before we truly know.
Finding A New Beginning
Timeless trauma can only be healed with transcendent time. Sometimes we have to travel to the ends of the earth to reach the end of ourselves and find a new beginning in God that never ends.
And what do we find in the end? An Ark? You’ll have to discover that for yourself. In our search for the Ark of History, we found the Arc of our Story. Finding Noah is more than about finding a boat. It's about a brotherhood found in Christ. Chaos creates calling and misery moves men to climb mountains to make a movie with a message so large it can only be read from the final frontier of the heart. A message from eternity that echoes into time: The greatest discovery in life is Who finds you when you are looking for something else.
Don’t lose heart. If you cannot change your circumstances, allow God to change your character instead. There is great hope in that. More than that, you’ll find a Fathers love awaiting your prodigal return as a true and mythic mountaineer searching for an Ark inside your painful heart. Join me and watch Finding Noah for an intimate and intense encounter with biblical history buried under the ice of legendary myth. You’ll be fascinated and inspired.
Kevin DeVries is an Entrepreneur-Explorer, Author-Adventurer, Inspirational Speaker and loving father of two from Grand Rapids, MI. He has served as a director and consultant for several faith based, nonprofit organizations across the country and is currently the Founder and President of Grace Explorations.
