Regeneration Summit

The Grand Canyon and the Gospel

5 years ago I stood in the very place I had been many times before, but this time, it was different.

My family lived in Phoenix for a few years when I was a kid, so trips to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon were a regular experience when family or friends were in from out of town. It’s a mile deep, 10 miles wide and 277 miles long. I went to the Canyon and hiked the Bright Angel trail as an 8th-grader as a part of our class trip. But here I was, a chaperone for another 8th-grade trip of the same nature, now 12 years later, but as I say, it felt very different.

There’s a place a few hundred feet to the right of the visitor’s center where you can cross the street that divides the parking lot from the pinion pines that line the the canyon rim. As I came through the trees and caught my first view of a brilliant, orange-red sunset that reflected off the walls of the north rim, it literally took my breath away – an experience I had previously thought was only reserved for Hallmark cards and the Top Gun soundtrack.

It was like I was seeing it all over again. Having remembered it like “that”, it was really more like “this”. A canyon moment.

In Ephesians 3, Paul is very clear about his fervent yearning that the Christians in Ephesus begin to grasp all over again how deep and wide and high and long the love of Christ is. This love, he says, surpasses all knowledge. Even as we begin to think we know, we come to realize that it’s less like “that”, and more like “this”. A never ending cycle of relearning and reloving what the Gospel means as “work out our salvation” and spread it to all the corners of our hearts.

Three questions for us…
1. Have you had a Gospel canyon moment lately? What are you learning about the depth and width of and length of the Gospel – for you? What does the view look like for you?
2. What  gets in the way of these canyon moments? What slows down or inhibits us from working out our salvation and reconnecting with the Gospel? You might consider your own attitudes, choices, or something else.
3. What expressions of the Gospel create canyon moments that make other disciples? How does the activity of Jesus, connected to the cross, help people fall in love with Him and create a proclamatory canyon moment for them?