Saving the Soul from Surrender
John Muir, naturalist extraordinaire, once charged a bear just so he could study its running gait. Is there anything else you need to know about the man? That’s about as crazy as chasing a lion into a pit on a snowy day! Muir once took a thousand-mile walk from Louisville, Kentucky, to New Orleans, Louisiana. Why? Just because. He explored sixty-five glaciers in the Alaska territory—and sledded down some of them. And a century before Bear Grylls went adventuring with celebrities on his reality TV show Running Wild, John Muir took President Teddy Roosevelt camping in the shadow of El Capitan. And, of course, John Muir did all of this before REI, GPS, or 30,000-BTU camping stoves!
If you’ve ever visited Yosemite National Park, you owe John Muir a thank-you. And if you haven’t visited, you need to. Hiking to the top of Half Dome was life goal #89 for me, and it ranks as one of my all-time favorite hikes! And very appropriately, I hiked the John Muir Trail to get there.
John Muir embodied the virtues of manhood in a unique way. The patron saint of the American wilderness was a man on a mission. His vision, his passion, “was saving the American soul from total surrender to materialism.” Like John the Baptist before him, Muir saw himself as a prophet crying out in the wilderness, crying out for the wilderness. His goal? To immerse everyone he could in what he called “mountain baptism.”
Starting at an early age, Muir read Scripture every single day. Actually, he did more than read it; he memorized the entire New Testament. Then he turned his attention to the book of nature, or as he called it, “the invention of God.” Muir believed that the Creator was constantly revealing Himself through His creation, so he studied it with more childlike wonder than perhaps anyone before—or anyone since!
Categories: Discipleship; Prayer; Personal Growth