Utopia North

Last week I attached a picture of a rainbow on our weekly blog. At the end of this story you will understand more how God has used rainbows at defining moments in our grand journey with Him.

We made it to Montana this week and it’s really a blessing from heaven. Today’s picture is the back of our cabin below a rainbow.

Today is my birthday and being here is truly an amazing gift. I’m sitting here looking west out our back porch window at the vast Kootenai National Forest and Mountain Range. A trail head into this wilderness is a flush 9 iron from my porch.The jagged Canadian Rockies can be seen to the North. We are eight miles from the Canadian border. Glacier National Park is an hour east.

But as I reflect today, this cabin doesn’t compare to the gift I received on my 50th birthday, years ago. I was the speaker at a week long family camp in the Rockies. On my half century birthday my wife and girls presented me with cool fly fishing accessories that I cherish to this day. I’m an avid fly fisherman. We love flies, waders, poles, and accessories. It's just part of that culture. But at the end of the day that wasn’t the greatest birthday gift ever and neither is this cabin in Eureka, Montana..

After speaking that morning, a guy from Minnesota asked to speak to me. We walked up to a high meadow where the mountain peaks, including Long’s Peak, flooded the horizon. We began a conversation that would change his eternal destination. He grew up believing in an angry and distant God. That week he was introduced to Grace and the voice of the Holy Spirit—a God of unfathomable love that desires a personal relationship with each of us.

He couldn’t believe it could be true. I watched as he received Jesus as his Lord right in a meadow of Colorado wildflowers.

There is no greater gift than being a part of an eternal destiny. I’ll never forget that moment. Later that day as I was about to speak at the evening event, a huge, bright, rainbow appeared in the upper meadow. One side of it touched the ground where we had our conversation. God putting an exclamation point on the most beautiful birthday gift of my life. There truly is a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow…