Another drive...another movement

Driving home from Newport with my best friend Callie after just spending one of the best weekends of my life with the cutest baby in the entire world and the cutest puppy in the entire world, the stage was set for an eruption of my heart all over the canvas of my ideas. The sun was just setting and the blues and oranges of the western sky were becoming more beautiful with each mile. A simple glance to the left and there it was, a single stream of water pouring out of the side of a mountain that had just been cut into for an extension of the interstate lanes. Another glance and I saw smoke rising from the ashes of what appeared be be a small brush pile at the foot of the mountain below. The smoke swirled up and leaned into the rugged mountain, like an old man laboring to his feet, after a long spell of sitting on his rocker. As it ascended the smoke met the horizon in unison with the evening clouds rolling in over the ridge, and I was moved. It was in that moment that I realized that the God we serve is persistent, and patient. He will sit atop the mountain and say, "you can carve roads through my mountains, and I will make waterfalls spring out of them, and you can burn my leaves, and i will use their smoke to draw attention to the clouds. It makes me wonder just how beautifully God will use the burned, carved up, wretched humanity we have all so willingly accepted, and turn it into His bride.