When I wrote The Pharaoh’s Daughter, my first book set in Egypt, I thought there was a pyramid around every corner. Not so! Something similar happens with folks all around the world. The first landmark I think of when I imagine Paris is the Eiffel Tower, but France is filled with so much more than that single landmark!
If you live outside the United States, what sort of landscapes or landmarks do you think of? In the early 2000’s, we hosted an exchange student from Sweden, and I think she expected to see the Rocky Mountains and Grand Canyon the moment she stepped off a plane in Indiana.
To her great disappointed, she saw only flat cornfields and soybeans during summer and drifting, lake-effect snow all winter. We did have Amish neighbors, who not only fascinated her but also kept her tummy happy with baked goods year round! Later during her stay, she did some traveling to see mountains and even the Grand Canyon. The United States, like Egypt, is a great big nation with lots of various landscapes!
God’s Creative Genius
20 min’s from our house – Blue Ridge Parkway
We now live in North Carolina’s Appalachian Mountains and recently traveled back to my childhood home to celebrate my mama’s 93rd birthday in Indiana. While traveling those approximately five hundred miles, I took a few snapshots of the changing countryside. After winding through Virginia’s hills, we enjoyed West Virginia’s mountains, crossed the Ohio River, and were welcomed to Indiana with a good ol’ fashioned snow storm (only 7″).
All-in-all a pretty good example of the fascinating way God’s creation varies slightly within a few hundred miles.
Virginian ~ West Virginia ~ Ohio
Every Land Has It’s Own Beauty
There are certain things we KNOW we’ll find in certain parts of the country. In Indiana during the winter, you’ll find lots of open space where it’s possible to see for miles. Some people say there isn’t much to look at, but God has created EVERY part of the earth with its special niche of beauty. I was born a Hoosier and lived there most of the first forty-four years.
Wanna know what I find most beautiful about Indiana?
The sky. Indiana has the most amazing cloud formations and sunrises/sunsets you’ll ever behold! Almost every day has a new masterpiece in which God surpasses the previous day’s grandeur. We need only look UP to be amazed!
As you can tell, I’m focusing this post on mostly God-made beauty–not on man’s accomplishments like the pyramids, the Eiffel Tower, or the Great Wall of China. Each of those engineering feats are certainly iconic structures that help define their locations.
Let’s take a closer look at what else defines the very unique land of Egypt…
Pyramids Are Tombs
Isn’t it crazy that some of humankind’s most incredible structures were constructed as tombs? People invested their greatest efforts and skilled projects based on their FAITH in an afterlife.
Egypt’s ancient pharaohs’ built the pyramids as their eternal retirement accounts. They gambled most of their wealth that their complex legends about hundreds of gods would keep them happy and healthy for eternity.
In 1842, Karl Richard Lepsius produced the first modern list of pyramids—now known as the Lepsius list of pyramids—in which he counted 67. Presently, 118 pyramids have been identified and listed by name (CLICK HERE for more pyramid information on Wikipedia).
CLICK HERE to peruse other famous tombs that have captured the world’s attention (like the Taj Mahal and Petra)!
A Better Builder
Statues of Memnon at Thebes during the inundation illustration by David Roberts (1796-1864).
While humans have been busy building pyramids and tombs through the millennia, God had already splashed His creative genius all over the globe! Before the first pharaoh built his pyramid (sometime before 3000 B.C.), the Creator had already dumped snow in the mountains south of there so the spring melt would flow north and swell the Nile to deliver nourishing silt to the land on both sides of the river.
Humans added statues to the riverbed; however, no one but Yahweh Himself could add snow to the mountains and fill the Nile during their season of Inundation!
When Job got a little cocky and demanded God explain Himself for allowing Job’s illness to continue entirely too long (in Job’s opinion), God didn’t answer Job’s “Why me?” question. Rather God answered with, “Who is this powerful God?”
God’s Great Work…
[God said to Job,] “Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep? …Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth? …Have you entered the storehouses of the snow or seen the storehouses of the hail …What is the way to the place where the lightning is dispersed, or the place where the east winds are scattered over the earth? Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain, and a path for the thunderstorm, to water a land where no one lives, an uninhabited desert, to satisfy a desolate waste land and make it sprout with grass?Does the rain have a father? Who fathers the drops of dew? …Do you know the laws of the heavens? Can you set up God’s dominion over the earth? Can you raise your voice to the clouds and cover yourself with a flood of water? Do you send the lightning bolts on their way?” Job 38:16, 18, 22, 24–28, 33-35
A little perspective on the One to whom we pray gives us a little more reverence when we ask those “why” questions, huh?
A Lesson On Grasshoppers
Early in my Christian walk, my husband and I went through a very difficult season that tested our faith. I wasn’t sure God heard our prayers, and if He did–I wasn’t sure He was a good God as others had claimed. When we’re hurting or scared, we often ask these three questions:
- Does God know?
- Does God care?
- Is God able to help?
If we believe our God is all-knowing and all-powerful, yet He doesn’t “save” us from trouble in this life, does it mean He simply doesn’t care?
Unfortunately, many people come to that FALSE conclusion and walk away from faith in a God they’ve accused as heartless.
Don’t Be a Grasshopper!
Judy Gallagher, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
In those early years of my faith, I was fortunate to attend a conference in which a single lesson stuck with me. I don’t remember the speaker’s name, but I’ll forever remember her analogy.
She spoke about Moses sending the twelve spies into the Promised Land. When they returned, they gave this report about the terrifying giants they saw there:
“We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.” Numbers 13:33
A grasshopper’s head is jointed to move ONLY side-to-side, and its eyes can see only on a horizontal plane. In other words, it’s physically impossible for a grasshopper to LOOK UP! The ten spies who returned in fear of the giants had looked only at the giants around them, forgetting to LOOK UP at the even BIGGER GOD who had promised to love and fight for them.
Today’s Question:
- Are you a grasshopper, so focused on the things of this earth that you’ve neglected to see the mighty God who has promised to love you and care for you on this sin-sick earth?
- What practical steps can you take today to remind yourself to LOOK UP at the Great Artist and/or Builder?
