KELSIE PETERSEN | Contributor and a Boy-Mom |
It’s my favorite time of year! Yes, it’s summer, that is true, and after a long Canadian winter, the warmth of summer is always so welcome, but more specifically, it’s the time of summer where we pack up the kids and the trailer (and everything but the kitchen sink), and head west through the Canadian Rockies. I grew up only slightly outside the shadow of the Rockies, and yearly visits were a given. Even moving a day’s drive further away for 20 years did not deter me from getting back to them at least once a year. Now that I can see them regularly again, my appreciation for them is even greater, because I know what it’s like to go without!
My awe of the mountains has only grown over the years, but I can recall being quite young and spending a long time just staring out the windows, imagining what it would be like to see all of that vastness up close. I’m not a hiker nor am I a mountaineer, but I love to imagine what it would be like to be in the wildness of the slopes and peaks and to stand in the middle of creation left largely untouched by human hands. When my kids were little, I spent the driving hours narrating what I was seeing out the window, pointing details and interesting facets out to them, and now, one of my favorite things is when they start pointing things out to me as they see them from their windows.
To me, the mountains bring a sense of wonder and awe, a sense of strength and a sense of peace, and as I’ve journeyed out of Adventism, it still strikes me how those same three concepts about the Lord have grown and multiplied as I’ve learned to walk in the truth and reality of the Gospel and everything that Jesus did for me.
As an Adventist, I had a reverence and respect for God, one that acknowledged Him as the author and creator of all things, particularly the Sabbath.
As an Adventist, I had a reverence and respect for God, one that acknowledged Him as the author and creator of all things, particularly the Sabbath. It was what felt like a somber, mental acknowledgment of what I believed/knew to be true. Having never heard the Gospel beyond a few cursory phrases I didn’t fully understand, I found it hard to take those feelings past a surface, perfunctory level. After being born again at 12 (in spite of Adventism), I spent 13 more years feeling a lot of internal dissonance, having a new spiritual awareness of the depth of wonder, yet trying to reconcile it with the cerebral Adventist environment in which I found myself. The wonder and awe that I feel now, when I think about the power and majesty behind all of His creation, when I think that the One who created those towering mountains humbled Himself to walk among us, and to take my own personal sin to the cross, and bear the punishment I deserve, to fully and completely and forever pay the price I owed, so that I no longer, yesterday, today or tomorrow, bear the weight of those things—that wonder and awe makes the requisite reverence and respect I once had seem trite and shallow.
Unchanging Majesty
Anyone who has driven through the Rocky Mountains, whether in Canada or the USA, or seen other grand and majestic elements of God’s creation wherever they are in the world, feels a sense of strength that comes from them. These huge slabs of granite, towering hundreds of feet in the air, standing tall day after day, century after century, millennia after millnenia, gives a sense of strength and surety that few other things can provide.
As a history buff, one of my favorite things to do is to look at photos showing the same location now and at some point in the distant past. Without fail, things change. The older community I live in looks nothing like it did even a few decades ago, and there are areas of the city nearby that look completely different than they did five years ago. Yet the mountains remain, standing tall and unchanged.
Last time, I wrote about my favorite Bible story book, the Jesus Storybook Bible. The author has a catch phrase to describe God’s love for me, and it has stuck with me. His “Never Stopping, Never Giving Up, Unbreaking, Always and Forever Love” is something that I never truly experienced in Adventism. The book phrases stories in the Old Testament as a “whisper” of the coming Messiah, and points to how God was always and forever pursuing His people, His creation. The strength behind that kind of commitment, love, and pursuit, the certainty of it, and now the security that comes from living IN it is something that Adventism could never offer me. The strength that the mountains display is only a small taste of the strength of the love He has for us.
Peace INSIDE
When I drive through the mountains, while their size and majesty is intimidating in a way, their unchanging surety and strength bring me a sense of permanency and peace. In Adventism, my peace seemed always tied to things outside of me. The state of the world (the adults always talking about the latest world events and their certainty of an impending Sunday Law) and the approval of those in authority over me (they certainly must know if I was doing everything that I needed to do to be fit for heaven) were things I looked to in order to know if it was “ok” to be at peace. There was lip service to “trusting Jesus,” but in the end, it was my actions that determined if I deserved His care—and even His protection (in the case of the coming Sunday Law and tribulation). The mountains today remind me that His peace can reign in my heart with the same permanency they display. His strength is strong enough, is certain enough, to sustain me in peace.
As this is published to the blog, we will be making our way across the Rockies, and my eyes will be glued to the window. The pictures I try to take never do them justice; there’s no way to truly capture the reality in front of me, so I will spend my time letting my eyes feast on each one. Every year I look forward to this trip because of the mountains—the sense of wonder and awe they bring, the strength and security they display, and the peace I feel as we drive amongst their shadows remind me of the ways believing the Gospel and breaking free from Adventism have allowed me to more fully and freely appreciate everything that has been, and is being, done for me. Thank you, Jesus! †
- Rocky Mountain Reminder - July 30, 2026
- A Book That Makes Me Leap for Joy! - April 23, 2026
- My Time is In His Hands - January 15, 2026