Fingerprints of God Read Free

raced up and down the densely forested hills, blindly stumbling down one trail after another, unable to see my hand in front of my face. At some point, I became genuinely frightened. The Smoky Mountains are home to bears. A few days earlier, I had been warned (wrongly, I later learned), a serial killer had been caught in these very woods. Finally, I sat down, closed my eyes, and prayed. I prayed to a God who engages with His creation, a personal God intensely interested in every one of us, an all-seeing God whose GPS would guide me off the mountain. I began to sing Psalm 139, sotto voce at first, then louder in case the All-Hearing didn’t pick it up. “Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit, and whither shall I flee from Thy presence . . .”
    This is the image I hold in my mind: singing a psalm at the top of my lungs, clapping my hands to scare away the bears between verses. Bolstered by the prayer, I ventured down one more trail, and in a few moments I saw— Thank God! —lights from houses in the far distance, with people inside, tucked in for the night with a book. I careered down the rocky trail, relieved that my small nightmare was over. It was a perfect story for telling at dinner: a little dangerous but not too.
    But the scene I was already imagining, regaling my dinner partners with this small adventure, abruptly ended. Between me and the little white house that had become my passage out of these black woods rushed a torrential river. Admittedly, it was more like a stream. But in the dark, it was a loud and angry stream, and dangerous, too, swollen to about forty feet wide by melted snow. Carefully, I waded into the water, hanging on to a tree branch that extended over the stream. The current instantly swept me off my feet. I clung fast to my sturdy little branch, surprised and grateful that it did not snap. Scrambling back onto the bank, I imagined some poor fisherman finding me three days later, miles downstream, caught in the brambles, my bloated body slapping softly against the bank.
    Gazing at the racing water, I listened as carefully as I could. It sounds childish now, but at that moment the existence of God hung in the balance. At my core I believed I would hear a “voice” telling me what I should do. For several minutes, I strained to hear it. Nothing. Nothing but my own sullen admission that I had but one choice. I could stay on the mountain or cross that river.
    And so I stumbled into the current as far as I could stand, and then, with a huge inhalation and a small cry, I heaved myself into the stream, tumbling and flailing until, miraculously, I smacked into the bank on the other side. I staggered out of the river, up to the little white house.
    “Hello! Hello!” I yelled, banging on the door as I watched the lights turn out in the back. Then, timidly, a frail, white-haired woman peered out her window.
    “Please,” I begged, “I’ve been lost in the mountains for hours !”
    “Oh, you’re all wet,” she said softly, opening the door a sliver.“Come in, come in.”
    I began to sob—relieved, yes, safe, yes—but feeling alive in a way I had not felt in years.
     
     
     
    TRANSFORMING INSIGHTS USUALLY COME in small moments and pedestrian crises. So it was for me. In those few hours alone in the Smoky Mountains, in the dark soil of my fear, a seed split open. I realized that for nearly a decade, I had been running down one trail after another, keeping to the familiar safety of a path that would leave me dry but never lead me home. At some point, I needed to cross the river and immerse myself in the unnerving questions about God, and reality, and whether what I instinctively believed was true—or rubbish.
    I was, to be honest, skittish. Skittish about ruining my reputation in a career where few people believe in God and fewer still bother to distinguish spirituality from religious politics. More than that, I was skittish about submitting my faith to scientific tests, exposing it to the