I am sitting here just outside of Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah. It is early morning and the beauty of this place is simply astounding. Yesterday, our family was hiking the canyon, the day before we were rock climbing in Moab, and the day before that exploring Arches National Park, home of some of the most amazing natural architecture that I have ever seen: stone arches and bridges that span hundreds of feet.

On one of those days, we took a guided canyoneering hike with one hundred foot rappels down into the deepest regions of the canyons. Our guide, a man of immense knowledge of the area, described the different layers of rock and sand and how they apparently formed as water came and receded and winds deposited layer upon layer of sand.

As he described the effects of millions upon millions of years of this, I found myself captured by the artwork of it all, the grandeur of it all. But of course, as a Christian, who believes fiercely in the inerrancy of the Bible, I was left with some questions; and honestly some doubts of how the two could coexist.

If the bible says that the earth was formless, and then God separated the waters from the dry land, was all of this just under that? Had it formed millions of years before, before Satan showed up to cause the darkness to reside over the earth. Or was my interpretation of the time frame of the bible wrong? Was it really not seven actual days, but rather seven periods, each consisting of unknown amounts of time. Or did God really do all this in one short week, only to make it look like millions of years to give us opportunity to believe.

As I have been pondering this, and the doubts that come with that, one thought keeps coming to mind. The magnitude and complexity of it all, the big picture. The life, the beauty, the DNA, the perfection, the Jay that just landed by my picnic table. Yes, take one part out, examine it, and we may come up with some plausible explanation apart from an all powerful God. But look at the whole, and there is no question of the plan and majesty of it all.

I am not an artist. Partly because I don’t have the skills, but also largely because I lack the patience that is required to create a true work of art. Understanding that God lives outside of our time and space, I have no problem imagining him taking millions of years to sculpt the Delicate Arch and Angels Landing. I also have no problem seeing him do it in a day, incorporating millions of years of work, just a meticulously into that single twenty-four hour day. Neither contradict my understanding of the Holy Scriptures. Both speak to me of the majesty and brilliance of our God, patiently laying down each layer of rock, water, sand. Blowing the winds of erosion and shaping the hoodoos as they explode upward from the earth.

Yet, maybe the part that I love the most is that he isn’t finished yet. As you walk through these stunning geological masterpieces, you are struck with the fact that even now they are still being formed, being changed, re-painted. It is the God that I know. The God who is infinitely patient, forming even me day by day. Thrilled with what he sees, but also enthusiastic as he imagines what I will look like tomorrow. This is what gives me hope, what teaches me to trust his great work in my life. It is he who is bring all of his creation, myself included, into the fullness of what the great artist had planned from before the creation of the world, be that seven thousand or seven billion years ago.

To the King,

David