image by John Prothero, contacts below
In a series of nine separate and necessary events, each with other people’s decisions involved, in August of 1975 God landed me where I could not have dreamed that big: living in a log cabin in the mountains above Taos, 8,500 ft., the nearest neighbor three miles away. Maybe not heaven for you, but it was for me. No work to do, just living on an unused guest ranch, and being paid for it. In the process of leaving my native SoCal for a fresh start on life, thinking of Colorado but going through Taos in the summer of my 27th year, I found myself “coming home, to a place I’d never been before.” Then came fall, and my first up close contact with aspen in their glory.
Dying
in a golden glory
buried
by winter’s snow
reborn
with the spark of spring
to the greenness of life
the new ring of a growing year
In times of trouble
when the end seems near
recall the lesson of the aspen
Within two trees
of God’s creation
lies the secret
of my rebirth
In exploring, I found a grove of golden aspen, shimmering in the breeze, with an old cattle camp in the midst: remnants of a pole corral, stones making a fire ring, even an old Folger’s coffee can. I still have it. Leaning against an aspen as the leaves drifted down onto small pine trees, with an effect like Christmas trees with golden ornaments, I thought I’d found the closest expression to heaven on earth, and the poem just flowed.
But I was wrong. Yes, my life changed, but in a way I’d never anticipated. I connected with the First Baptist Church in town, and they loved me back into the ministry I had left three years before.
Taos wasn’t to be my home from then on, but a catalyst for something better. The two trees? The cross when I came back to God seven years before, and the aspen as a metaphor of how God arrives unexpectedly, giving the grace of Taos…temporarily. He always meant it that way.
The takeaway for us all? Be open. Be flexible. Many times what God brings into our lives is a stepping stone, just one thread of the tapestry he is weaving in our lives, with our lives. A necessary but temporary Taos.
Be willing to leave your Taos, whatever it is, when he moves you on to be more useful to his kingdom. Yes, be sure it’s him. Argue with him, resist him to be sure he’s nudging. And let’s do this daily, “…my soul is downcast within me. Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the LORD’s great love…his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:19-23).
Kick Starting the Application
Do you have a “Taos” of your own? Are you willing to give it up if He asks? How do you confirm it’s his message?
Note: the picture is from John Prothero. His contacts: johnprotherophotographer.com. Instagram: j.prothero.photographer Facebook: JProtheroPhotog and johnscoffeehouse. Blog: johnscoffeehouse.blogspot.com