Instead of worshiping God in the church like we have done all our lives, Joe and I decided to hike up to Cypress Mountain to worship yesterday. It was truly a wonderful experience as we were able to experience the presence and closeness of god. During the hike, I felt as if God had inspired me that life is really just like a hike. Here, I’d like to share my part of god’s theophany to me yesterday.

Hiking is like a life! In the beginning of the hike, I was full of energy and hope and ready to conquer anything. This is similar to when we were young, we are physically at our best and have high hopes for our lives. Then the further we went, the more tired I felt. I was actually surprise at how weak I was and wanted to give up. Thankfully, when I saw some gleams of the beautiful golden sunlight shinning up above from the mountain through the shaded area where we hiked, I was motivated and eager to get up to the top to worship our lord. In addition, I was motivated by Joe’s help and other hikers’ encouragement, I declared in my heart that no matter how hard the trail is going to get, I am going to reach the top and see the full-blown glory of God. Also, the more I hiked, the more hiking tips and techniques I learn which makes the hike so much easier. Now this is like the older we get, the more wisdom on the reality of life we gain though our bodies begin to wear out. We sometimes lose hope and want to give up. Thankfully, God encourages us by sending many beautiful signs and wonderful people into our lives so that we can keep going until we reach heaven where we share the incomprehensivable joy and magnificent glory of our lord!! ^^

After we reached the end of the trail, we were very joyful and we enjoyed some warm and declious chicken soup. Afterwards, we found a quiet place and began our worship. We began with a prayer. Afterwards, we sang some hymns to the lord. Finally, we listened to a sermon of tape. We closed by a prayer for our friends and some of our own needs. As it was getting really cold, we decided to return to Vancouver and have lunch ^^

Hiking up to the mountain and worshiping god there is a totally wonderful experience. Not only do we get some much-needed exercise, we also get to draw closer to god. We can retreat to a quite place where we are free of distraction and just focus on the lord and indeed, this is truly what we need to do. Next time, I hope that we can gather more people to go together so that we could worship god in a manifcant way!
Let our worship reach high high high up above heaven!!!

I thank god for this wonderful experience.


-- Edited by jane at 08:15, 2004-11-01