All in a Day

Rockies, Prairies, Badlands - all in one day. That was the drive back from Fairmont BC to Drumheller, Alberta. And along with the changing topography, fresh ideas about the God who created and shaped these changing landscapes. The road between Banff and Canmore ran by some knife edged ridges, violently thrust heavenward from the earth’s core, expressing the violence of God’s creative power, the Lord of Hosts, awesome in glory.

The highway then passes through foothills, and gradually the land around becomes prairie - great swathes of grassland with just a few ranches and oil wells dotted here and there, and the occasional combine harvester picking up the end of the season’s harvest. Suddenly the heavens are wide and empty with amazing arrangements of cloud stretching from horizon to horizon. Although it’s just sky and atmosphere, this heavenly canvas seems to possess a solidity that brings to mind the old fashioned word “firmament” - something firm and in place, while in a constant state of flux - a flowing palette of translucent blues, pinks and grays. This express the breadth of God in his Omnipresence, constantly there, constantly watching over that which He has made.

We skirt round the northern edge of Calgary and reach Drumheller just as the sun  sets in a red blaze of colour. The road dips below the horizon into a deep valley of dry broken rocky slopes, each one exhibiting a whole history in sedimentary layers of shale and sandstone. This is the badlands - dinosaur country - the landscape carved out by a great ancient water system long since dried out to leave weird rock formations, called “hoodoos” and a rich treasure in the fossil remains of ancient creatures. Here, then, is the Ancient of Days, the Lord of time, who is from everlasting to everlasting. So a drive through Western Canada becomes an education in finding out God.