Nature

At the top of the stairs Joe found himself in another room. It was smaller than the room below. Directly across from the stairway was what appeared to be a hallway. There was some kind of light reflecting off the walls. It was the only way out of the room that Joe could see, so he went over and investigated. The floor rose slightly before him, and after a few steps Joe realized that the reflection on the walls was sunlight. It was the first sunlight he had seen since…actually he couldn’t remember when he had last seen the sun. He quickened his pace. He came out onto a small porch, or platform, but he had to back away because his eyes had not adjusted to the light. After a few moments Joe stepped outside again. The porch was more like a balcony with a tone wall about belt high. He looked down. There below him was a beauty and grandeur he hadn’t expected. He saw a green valley and a river. Was that the ocean off in the distance? Down below him two birds flew. He took a deep breath of the fresh air. Was that flowers he smelled? How could that be? As he looked around he noticed that he couldn't see everything. The sun was behind him and the mountain cast a shadow over much of the land. But he enjoyed the view anyway. After a while he realized he had still not found his way out of the room, so he went back inside.

An hour later Joe had still not found the way out. Two hours after that he had found nothing. He even went back down the stairs and inspected the big room again. He dove down into the pool, he looked at the ceilings of both rooms, he got on his hands and knees and checked out the floor. Nothing. He got the boulder and rolled it around inspecting the walls as high as he could reach. Still nothing, nothing, nothing. He took a break. He picked a handful of berries, and went up to the porch and sat down to enjoy the view again. The sun was high in the sky, so there were few shadows. Joe thought: “If I never get off this mountain, I could die happy right here in this place.” But he still wanted to get down. Something had changed in him. Those first two doors had forced him to make a decision about what he believed. He was not an atheist. That meant he believed there was a God. Then there was the door with the statement about truth. What did it say again? Something like, “the truth will set you free.” Joe knew that he wanted to know the truth, and to be free of this mountain. He knew there was a God. That would have to be enough for now.

Joe had heard somewhere that if you eliminated everything that wasn’t true, whatever was left over would have to be true. So, if he could eliminate all the places where he knew there was no escape, whatever was left had to be his way out. He had inspected all the walls, and floors and ceilings of both rooms. He had found no openings, or clues to openings. There were no openings! For a brief moment he thought about trying to climb back up the tunnel he had slid down earlier, but that made no sense. If there was a design behind all this, then going back was probably not an option. So, if going back was not an option, he could eliminate the room below from his thinking. But he had inspected this room over and over. He said out loud, “There is no opening.” Maybe that’s what it took, but when he spoke those words, he realized that there was an opening. He was sitting in it. It was so obvious he missed it. He stood up and inspected the balcony, but nothing looked like a way out. Then he turned around and looked up. It was a sheer cliff beyond imagining. There were no handholds, but there was a Bible verse on a small plaque. It said: “Proverbs 14:12 ‘There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.’” Well, that was straightforward enough. Besides going up the cliff was almost the same as going back. He was never going back. So he lay down and looked over the edge. There below him was a ledge. That had to be the way. Clearly he needed to lower himself down to that level.

Before going on Joe went down and got one last drink wishing he had his water bottle and backpack with him. He picked some berries and put them in his shirt pocket and went back up to the opening. He sat on the edge, flipped over on his stomach, and lowered himself down to the ledge below. Only there was no ledge below. He was hanging almost by his fingertips, and there was nothing below his feet but air. He started to panic. He loved to climb, but his route was always well planned, and he had his equipment to rely on. In fact, Joe had a deep-seated fear of falling. He’d had several nightmares about falling. His pursuit of climbing was an attempt to prove he would not be conquered by fear. That fear began to swell up from inside, but then Joe remembered that this had to be the only way. He had eliminated every other possibility. His eyes had not deceived him. There was a ledge below his feet. Apparently he had just miscalculated the distance. He thought about trying to pull himself back up, but didn’t he just say a few minutes ago that he was never going back? With that thought he let go.

He dropped about two feet and landed safely on the ledge and in that same instant he realized the horrible truth that if he’d had his backpack on he would have lost his balance for sure and fallen to certain doom. He never wished for that stuff again. He turned around and assessed his situation. The ledge was about three feet wide. To his left it ended under the opening above. To his right it disappeared around a bend in the rock. So he turned and followed the only path open to him.

The width of the ledge gave him a little confidence, but still it was unnerving being stuck on the side of a mountain with nothing below him. But then again, was that really true? He did have the ledge after all. That reminded him of a snippet from an old song he’d heard: “Watch the donut, not the hole.” Even so, he was still careful. Around the bend the ledge came to an abrupt end. This was not what he expected. He walked back up the pathway looking for clues, but there were none. So he went down to the end fearing what he would find. Sure enough, there below him was another ledge. Okay, he knew how to do this, he thought. A minute later he was again hanging with nothing below his feet. Again he dropped, but the fall was longer this time. The surprise was frightening. When his feet hit his knees buckled and he crumpled to the ground.

Joe wanted to sit for a minute and gather himself, so he turned around and rested against the cliff wall. It was then he noticed that the sun was getting rather low in the sky. It wouldn’t be too long before sunset, and after that of course, darkness. Then what? He was going to have to sleep sometime. He couldn’t sleep on this ledge without worrying about rolling off the side. The thought of waking up falling through the black night was too terrifying to think about. He had no choice but to deal with sleeping when the time came. There were so few things he had control over, but moving on and not giving in to despair were things he could control. So that’s what he did. He got up and moved on.

This path was quite a bit longer than the last one. It was almost dusk and there was no end in sight. He was inspecting the wall for any kind of an opening as he went. That’s how he found the cave. About chest high was a shallow cave that depressed into the cliff wall five or six feet. It was smooth and dry and tall enough for him to sit up inside, but the best part was that it sloped inward away from its opening so he did not have to worry about rolling off the mountain in the middle of the night.

Joe used his sweatshirt for a pillow and lay down. What most occupied his thinking as he lay there was where this path would end. The shock of that last drop was weighing heavily on his mind. He kept picturing his head hitting a rock and his brains oozing out. What a morbid thought, especially after all the ways he had been provided for up to this point. And there was the deal. Had God provided all these things? Even though he had lost all his personal stuff, he had found water, food, and shelter when he needed it. That couldn’t be coincidental could it? “But I can’t get that oozing brain picture out of my mind” he said aloud. As darkness closed in around him, Joe closed his eyes and fell asleep. He didn’t have one dream about falling.

When he awoke Joe opened his eyes and immediately two things came to his attention. First of all he was hungry, and secondly there was another Bible verse on the roof of the cave right above his feet. It read “Ecclesiastes 3:11 ‘He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.’”

“Eternity,” Joe thought, “I’d be happy if I lived through the day.” But what a day it was! He didn’t know what time it was, but the sky was blue, the sun was shining, and it appeared like he had a lot of day left to enjoy. He remembered the berries he had picked yesterday, but they were gone. All that was left in his pocket were some dried flakes. It wasn’t like the berries had gotten crushed, they just disintegrated. He tried eating the flakes, but they tasted horrible. So he climbed down from his berth and ventured onward. It continued for some time in a generally downward direction though there were regular dips and rises and switchbacks. Occasionally he would cross a stone bridge over a deep cut in the mountain. Joe looked for water, or plants, but that was not to be.

After about an hour of walking, the path came to a tunnel. The tunnel was about four feet high. Joe got down on his knees and looked inside. About six feet inside the opening was a wooden door. Joe crawled in. There was a long Bible verse written on the door. It read: “Matthew 6:25-34 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

Joe pushed on the door, but it would not give. Then he found a handle. He grabbed and pulled but it wouldn’t open that way either. So he rose up on his knees and grabbed the handle with both hands and started to pull. Once, twice, three times. Then with the next pull the door came open. He went inside to find that the door did not lead to another tunnel or cave like he expected. In fact the door was in a wall, and behind the wall was something like a garden. There was a brook falling down a ravine in the mountain. On both sides of the brook were apple trees and green grass and flowers. How all this grew at this altitude was a mystery to him, but Joe planned to enjoy all of it. The path led to a stone bridge across the brook and there were stairs leading down to the garden. What a wonderful place for breakfast. At the time he thought, “If someone were to ask me to design a place for peaceful relaxation and quiet rest, it would look just like this.” It was as if someone had picked this place out of his mind and made it real. It wasn’t just the food. It was the sense of well-being and rest.

Joe washed and drank and ate some apples. Then he sat down in the grass and listened to the brook. After a while he turned his thoughts to what he had been contemplating before he went to sleep last night. If it was true there was a God, then Philo was right, there were two realities. There was the natural world of rocks and trees and water and bodies of all sorts, but then there was another nonmaterial reality. A spiritual reality. That meant he had a body and a soul, a brain and a mind. There was more to existence than what could be measured or quantified. Life was greater than the sum of its parts. Is that what that verse meant “he set eternity in the hearts of men?” If so, that would explain why the naturalistic view of the world never really satisfied him. Oh, he pretended it did because to admit otherwise was to go against everything he had been taught and expected to believe. It would also explain how he got on this mountain in the first place, and why the view from this mountain was no view at all. It was built on blindness, ignorance and even lies. Mostly he had lied to himself. But he knew one thing: he was never going back to that again.
Questions:

1. What is significant about the shadow the mountain cast over the valley?

2. How did Joe finally figure out that the way out had to be from the room at the top of the stairs?

3. What is the reason why Joe’s journey was always downward? In what way does Proverbs 14:12 relate to this reason?

4. What truth is illustrated in the quote: “Watch the donut, not the hole.”?

5. Generally, what was Joe learning about God’s provision?

6. What is significant about Joe’s conclusion that he had both a brain and a mind? How does this relate to the title of this chapter?

7. Why had the berries disintegrated? How does Matthew 6:25-34, and the garden relate to this?