Utah Vacation - Day 3, cont., Zion on

From Zion to Bryce

As we went through the tunnel out of Zion National Park, we continued to be awestruck.  Every turn in the road we would just be in awe of how magnificent the rock formations continued!

When we could, we would park the car and get out to do a little climbing or just to stop and stare.

Some vacations you go on are to man-made places - like Great Wolf Lodge or Silver Dollar City.  But this vacation we listened to worship songs and our hearts were lifted in praise to the One who created all this beauty!

One thought we had was that when God spoke creation into being, that the world really was a perfect place.  I think it was probably a lovely 70 degrees all the time!  Ha! 

"God saw all the He had made, and it was very good."  Genesis 1:31

Then you reach chapter 6:5,6 where it says "every inclination of the thoughts of men's heart was only evil all the time.  God was grieved that He had made man on the earth, and His heart was filled with pain."

Then God sent a flood that flooded the earth for 150 days.  Only Noah, his family and the animals God called were saved.  "On that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened."  Gen. 7:11  The whole earth was writhing!  And then it says that God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and livestock so He sent a wind over the earth.  "The springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky.  The water receded steadily from the earth." Gen. 8:2,3

Can you imagine the force of all that water receding and creating all those canyons and molding all the rocks. 

But the really neat thought is that although probably all this was formed from the impact of the flood waters and the underground water bursting out, today it is so beautiful and amazing to look at.

God redeemed it.  He brought "beauty from ashes" so to speak.  And He does that in our lives too.  Our lives can be a mess and there are consequences to those things.  Whether it is slander, prostitution, stealing, a bad and critical attitude - whatever - when we let Him work in us, He can redeem it and make beauty from it.  Isaiah 61

"Therefore, if any person is (ingrafted) in Christ, the Messiah, he is (a new creature altogether,) a new creation; the old (previous moral and spiritual condition) has passed away.  Behold, the fresh and new has come!  2 Corinthians 5:17