The Construction of God’s Highway
Trail Ridge Road is a section of Colorado Highly 34 that runs through Rocky Mountain National Park. The route climbs and falls drastically from Estes Park to Grand Lake, rising above the treeline into the alpine tundra, a bitterly cold and windy place where burrowing wildlife hide among the stunted and slow growing plants. Everything stays low to the ground to avoid the extreme gusts of wind aside from beautiful, complex rock formations, dark and light colored rocks fused together in mushroom shapes. The road can be frightening to drive upon, even during fair weather. Steep switchbacks and terrifying drops demand respect from even the most eager of family minivan drivers, but the experience is rewarding. One can stand at 12,000 feet and see for miles, mountains, valleys, trees, tundras, cold rivers, and crystal clear lakes. However, there is a terrible irony in the road. The very thing that got you there breaks the immersion. Here you see this beautiful, pristine environment, but the only reason you were able to get up to the top of this mountain without days of challenging hiking, is because of a line of cement and paint that cuts through rocks and levels the rugged land. You can avoid looking at the road for a moment and imagine that you are there a hundred and fifty years ago, before construction crews chiseled and blasted rock and moved heavy equipment in to lay the highway, but you can never escape it. The cold wind blows, and you realize you need to get back to the comfort of your car and continue on along the road.
There is something sad about this. While it is good that people can enjoy these views, and perhaps be moved to protect the beauty of the land, there is a sense of sacredness that is robbed from the land when we lay cement on these very fragile ecosystems so that tourists can go take selfies with funny faces, reducing these wonders of God’s Creation to a background for a post on social media. Signs instruct visitors to stay on the trails because foot traffic can disturb the hardy but vulnerable plants of the tundra so much that it can take hundreds of years to fully recover if too much trampling is done. Yet how many cars traverse the road every day when the highway is open? How many fragile plants had to die to give this dead road life? And how many millenia will it take for this slow-changing ecosystem to fully recover? Environmentalists may have some strong feelings about this road, and certainly there was internal division when it was initially planned and built. Nonetheless, now we have it, and it is certainly a wonderful experience to drive on it.
Isaiah 40:1-11 also talks about a highway, and the imagery here seems much more harmful to nature than the construction of Trail Ridge Road, which was done as respectfully as possible. “Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low.” The very topography of the land is being flattened. Where this highway runs, there are no mountains. Everything is straight and level. This isn’t about enjoying the highs and lows of the land. This is about completing the journey. This is about going home. The people who had been exiled are now called to return, and nothing is going to block their way. No one will be left behind because they couldn’t climb the mountain. No one will be left behind because they were too afraid to cross the desert. And God will have no problem getting to the people.
There are certainly harsh environments out there, unfriendly to humans. Deserts are hot and dry, and if you get stranded they can be merciless. Frozen tundras are no friendlier. And though it can be fun to wander on hiking trails through a swamp, bog, or bayou, I wouldn’t want to be expected to traverse one, dodging the wild animals and finding my way through brackish water and thick mud. We may say that some of these places are simply not meant for humans to inhabit. We should leave these harsh lands to the creatures suited for them and not try to make them our own, growing green lawns in desert lands and paving tundras for tourists. However, God’s good news won’t be barred by natural barriers. Nature is meant to serve God’s will, not interfere with God’s plan.
In Genesis, humans were entrusted with the task of caring for God’s Creation, stewarding the resources of nature. This means we aren’t here to exploit it, to take from the earth and give nothing back, to bend it to our will for the sake of endless production. However, stewardship still requires management. Sometimes, a road must be built, because God’s people have need of it.
Near the end of this passage, we see this command, “Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings,” and we may wonder what high mountains are left if all of them have been leveled. Throughout the passage, images of nature are used, and there is certainly an important tension within the text. Yes, God will flatten mountains to create this highway because these mountains are in the way. However, God will also preserve mountains so that people can climb them to see and proclaim God’s word. Whether a mountain is flattened or preserved depends upon its service to God’s word.
We can take at least two important lessons from this. On the one hand, we need to find an appropriate balance with nature. Sometimes the natural world is chaotic, and God calls us to bring order to preserve life and well-being. However, we cannot exceed our mandate and destroy nature for our own selfish gain. Management of nature should always be in service to God. We should ask what preserves life and advances the proclamation of the Gospel, and those things which best meet those criteria should be our objectives.
Additionally, perhaps we can see this tension in decisions outside of care for creation. There are many choices we need to make on a daily basis about how we spend our time and money, how we vote, how we treat people, and more. Sometimes, it can be difficult to find what is the best thing to do, especially when something could be right in one case and the same thing could seem wrong in a different scenario. However, if we are committed to God’s word as our foundation, perhaps we can navigate these challenges more comfortably. The Gospel must be proclaimed to the ends of the earth, and that especially includes in our own communities where the Gospel has been so diluted and the teachings of God have been replaced by the teachings of our current age. How we act in the world, how we treat others and the various choices we make should reflect a concern for the high importance of God’s word. Whether we are considering building a new road or welcoming a new family to town, we must always seek to advance to Gospel and all the teachings of God.
