Of Redwoods and Rivers and Sand Dunes

Your ways, O God, are holy…Your path led through the sea, your way through the mighty waters, though your footprints were not seen.

Psalm 77:13,19

One last stop in Oregon ladies, at the Lewis and Clark National Historical Park in Astoria. Surely you know of Lewis and Clark; but let me refresh your minds. 

In the spring of 1804, hot on the heels of the Louisiana Purchase from France of 828,000 acres of land west of the Mississippi, Jefferson commissioned Merriwether Lewis and William Clark to find a route to the Pacific, thereby consolidating U.S. footing in the west. The group set out May 14 from St. Louis MO to follow the Missouri River to the ocean, or so they thought. Much to their distress they would discover, in July of 1805, the headwaters of the Missouri. Their river to the Pacific had dead ended. No one had reported this strange phenomenon along the crest of the Rockies, the Continental Divide which separated the rivers flowing to the east from those flowing to the west. 

Fortunately the expedition had made friends of the Shoshone who supplied them with horses to cross the Rockies. On the western slopes they discovered the headwaters of the Snake, dug out cottonwood canoes, and floated down to the Columbia, arriving at the Pacific in mid-November 1805—some 4000 miles from St. Louis. The men wintered at Fort Clatsop near Astoria OR before making the return trip with detailed maps, flower and plant specimens, animals they’d trapped, and journals of their adventures.* 

Like Lewis and Clark who couldn’t anticipate the dead end of the Missouri on their trek to the Pacific, Moses and Aaron certainly had no idea what was in store for them when they got to the Red Sea. No way did they expect God’s path to take them on dry land through what had just been a raging river. Even though they couldn’t see His footprints leading the way in the riverbed, they had to trust that He knew what He was doing.    

And you? When God takes you on an adventure with Him on the waters of life, do you follow Him through thick and thin wherever the river may take you? His ways are always holy, even when you can’t see His footprints.   

Nancy P

*National Park Service brochures