I stand upon the cold, hard stone - the earth’s bones, their old gray forms having stood here for years beyond my count or experience. All about me the stone plunges swiftly down into a yawning chasm. Upon my right the great wall of stone circles around, in a deep amphitheater of cliff and tumbled, broken boulders, with but a few trees beneath them reaching towards the sky, their deep, cool moulds sloping down away from the roots of the stone. Gray and ambered and reaved with great, black streaks the stone rounds and rounds, brooding in unspeaking grandeur. The heads of the trees, now bereft of leaves, cower beneath the stone’s stare, and crouch away from the feet of the cliffs. Ahead and to the left a valley falls steeply away to a further one, and beyond its wooded floor another great slope and cliffline soars upwards to meet the gray, brooding sky. A long narrow ridge cuts through this valley, and I can see, dimly through the gray forms of winter-stricken trees, an enormous hole riven through the distant ridge, as if cut by the hands of giants in dim far-off days. Streams trickle and cascade rhythmically, unceasingly, somewhere far below, beyond my sight, but sharp and clear in the echoes of the stone. Behind me a scraggly pine-tree shaw grips the stone and thin sand, the tortured trees writhing against a heavy wind gusting down from the grayling sky. I stand as one graven in these very stones, small and insignificant in this great tapestry of stone and tree and water.

I stand upon this stone - a speck against the sky. I am a mortal man, doomed to die. Compared to the ancient mass I stand upon, and the deeper, more ancient earth far beneath it, I am but a shadow passing swiftly over the world. My footsteps will tremble the ground but for a day, my breath trouble the air for an hour - and then I shall depart from this life, and the stones will not wonder at my going. Such is the way of all things upon this fallen earth. I can no more prevent my death than I can command a mountain to rise by my word. I am a man, and man is tragic in himself, doomed to sin and death, in himself. As I stand upon this high place I am keenly aware of the shortness of my days, and my own humble estate. Why is it that God troubles with me? I oft stand in defiance of Him, and indeed was for too long His enemy, as are all unredeemed men: He who delves these stony deeps and raises the mountains and hills, and sends the rivers flowing, I stood in defiance and challenge to. I slumber, my thought and heart straying from Him. I fail to give my loyalty to my Lord, my Savior, reckoning my own craft and skill and boasting in them. In the comfort of civilisation, where I may control fire and light and imagine to control death itself, it is easy to construe myself as sufficient, and grow prideful of my works. Not in this land. I cannot force these stones to fall for me, I cannot bid the streams part that I may cross freely, and I cannot command the forest bow at my feet. I am bereft of all my convenience and power, and realize how dependent I am upon God and His grace - and His love, that causes Him to draw me and redeem me. For it is by His grace and love, by Him and Him alone, that I live - and life not only of breath and blood, but greater life, fed by my Lord’s flesh and blood. It is life that lasts longer than these stones and ancient hills, far longer than the brief days of my steps upon the earth. To Him I owe all, for by Him I am who I am, and all my true boast is in Him. Were it not for His love and grace, I would be but a mortal man, grimly facing a dark end, and passing forever into sheol, the pit, with death the ending. How great is His love! How great was the sacrifice of Christ Jesus - He who sustains all this splendour about me, He who brought it all into being, and by whom I am kept alive in body and spirit.

So I gaze across the deeps, and ponder on my smallness. But I am a servant to my Lord, though oft a wayward and lazy one. And yet He may use me in His ways - but only if I am humble before Him, and lowly and meek. For God uses the lowly things of the world to shame the high and bring them low. These great stones are carved and broken, not by great force of hammer or blow, but by trickling water and winter ice - the great holes in the stone yonder were broken, piece by steady piece, by the slow workings of water and ice. Stone crumbles and earth heaves to ruin as roots pierce the cold ground and, year after year, crack and split rock and slope. These lovely little mosses and lichens that I see growing upon the bluff-edge - tiny, lowly little plants that hug the ground and grow quietly in shadows - churn stone and break it, slowly and steadily. They are lowly - quite literally - and yet they crush the strongest of stone. As I turn to the forest behind me, I see great skeletal bores of pines - stricken dead by a tiny beetle, boring through and piercing the tall tree - brought low by things that are all but unseen.

Such is the way of God’s workings with man. Our Lord was born, not to a great and famous queen, but to a young virgin girl in a Judean village. It was not to Herod or Caesar that the first tidings of the Savior’s birth came, no, but to shepherds and villagers, and to obscure foreign folk. When Jesus was brought to the temple, who hailed Him? An old man and a lowly prophetess, likely unknown to all but a few. Who heralded His ministry? A strange man who dwelt in the wilds and ate locusts and wore skins. What sorts of men did He choose as His disciples? Fishermen and tax collectors - not famed scribes or scholars or men of noble birth.

Certainly, God can, and does sometime, use spectacular things to work His will - mountains leap forth in fire, oceans boil in great turmoils, and He sends forth kings with keen blades - but it is largely the lowly things, the shamed things, the things that seem foolish, that He uses. It is foolish folk like myself, lacking in many of the ways of the world, that He employs. When I rise in my pride, He withdraws His hand from me, and I am but a crass gong. In humility He uses me, and when I am humblest I am closest to Him, for I do not insert any of myself between. It is in humility that I may enjoy His love, and carry His love to others. My strength is weakness, and my wisdom foolishness - but His strength is stronger than any force or power, and His wisdom sees all eternity!

Reminded of these things, I look out over the stone and forest a little while longer. The wind is rising, and the sky threatens rain, so I call to my companion and we prepare to strike off back into the dying pine wood and through the thick brambles and briars that cut my fragile form. I am still but a small hobbit in a very large world, but I am loved in a manner greater than any I could ever imagine. And if I am kept humble as I ought be - and such places and sights can help one keep to it! - God may use me to work His ways, as an instrument, a servant in His hands. And that is an encouraging thought.