Lean Into the Wind

A film shown at the Visitor Center at Badlands National Park includes one explorer’s advice. He says that one who really wants to experience the Badlands cannot be put off by the heat, the wind or the rattlesnakes. Rather than shunning the brightness of the sun, let it shine in your eye and on your back. Rather than running from the never-ending wind, lean into the wind, for only in this way can the Badlands be embraced in all their rugged beauty.

You can drive through the park, but from the safety of your car you will never experience the nuances of the other-worldly landscape. You will never know the awe and wonder I felt standing on a particular outcropping. Below me was a deeply shadowed canyon bordered by amber fields of the prairie. Around me a natural cathedral drew my eyes and my spirit, lifting them up and up toward the heavens. I knew I was standing on holy ground and wept simply for the beauty of it all.

Erosion is a powerful and destructive force. But erosion also creates and reveals the beauty that is the Badlands. Erosion eventually - in half-million years or so – will completely wear away this land. The landscape will be completely transformed, even as it has changed over time from tropical sea to prehistoric watering hole to a wonderland of desert sandcastles.

This all got me to thinking about the powerful and destructive forces in our own lives. We fight against them. We scream and cry. We blame God for not stopping them.

What if we could learn to lean into the winds of adversity? What if we quit running for shade when the heat of the moment became too uncomfortable?

What potential might we uncover? What beauty might be revealed in us?

Is it possible you cannot run from your “Badlands” experience, but rather you must embrace it and grow and become the beautiful and treasured person God has created you to be?

And when the work in you is complete and the grace of your beauty has been revealed all the world will look upon you and exclaim, “Look, there is one whose life lifts our eyes and our spirits toward God. There is one who points us to the Holy.”