The Glacier
By Chris Butler, as published in Gritty Faith: Wild (c) Purpose + Grit, LLC 2025
Gray skies.
Rain drizzles off and on as we travel north on the Icefields Parkway in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. The car turns the corner and the skies clear enough so I can see it . . . the Ice.
My family and I have arrived at the Athabasca Glacier in Jasper, Alberta.
The air is chilly and damp as I put on my puffer jacket and grab my hiking sticks to walk the steep and rocky path. Snow-covered peaks accent the glacier formation. An amazing sight to behold—wispy, ashy clouds give it an ethereal beauty . . . frozen in time.
Suddenly, I hear it, a sound like a strong breeze blowing through a forest. Walking up over a rise, I see it now . . . a turbulent stream flowing with glacial water carving out a path. Gray, like cement, it flows in haste, yet the giant ice field in the backdrop remains silent and still, in hues of white, gray, and blue.
My kids, more adventurous than I (okay, more physically fit) set off at a quick pace, eager to walk onto that icy landscape. I then have opportunity to reflect. I find a large rock to use as my “chair” to watch, to listen, and to be still.
When we look at a glacier, we do not see motion. It just sits. Nothing to notice.
But hidden from our view, underneath the layers of ice, something is at work. The frozen mass is shifting, melting, and moving. I hear the rush of water flowing. It is louder than I expected. I watch as the gray waters charge through dirt and rocks, deepening the channel that moves downstream. It is noticeable—it is changing the landscape.
We often have times in our lives when not much is noticeable. It appears as if even God is not moving. Nothing is changing and the landscape looks the same. We pray and pray and still see no movement. We wonder if God is listening.
God is listening to us but He sees everything from a different perspective. He has an overhead view, an eternal perspective beyond our ability to understand. Make no mistake, God is at work—orchestrating people, circumstances, and events in our lives. He is changing our life landscapes.
He may not move in the way we think, or how we expect, or even in the way we prayed . . . but God does not sleep. He is always at work. “Jesus replied, ‘My Father is always working, and so am I’” (John 5:17 NLT).
God is working out His plan—for His glory and for our good. He not only moves to change the landscape but to transform us. God the Father is continually growing us into the likeness of His Son Jesus. At times, He prunes out what is damaging us on the inside: our pride, our relationships, our idols, our guilt, our anger. It hurts, it cuts, and it may leave behind wounds. But God is with us to heal those wounds, especially as they often leave behind scars. Perhaps we can call them battle scars. A reminder that we survived and can keep moving forward in the strength of the Lord. After all, Jesus still carries scars from the battle at the cross.
Peering through binoculars, I discover the glacier also has scars—deep grooves and irregular chasms cut into the ice. They, too, are from a battle, one that began in a perfect garden long ago. Creation groans, as do we, as we await the hope of restoration.
In the meantime, God does not leave us alone and scarred. He continually moves, like those glacial waters, to mold and shape us into the individuals He created each of us to be. This takes time. Like a glacier that moves so slow that one can barely detect its movement, God moves in His timing, not in ours. We may feel or think He is not working in our lives, but remember God is still at work. We see only the frozen landscape. But what if it’s in the waiting when we catch a glimpse of God moving, and the landscape shifting, as we make time to sit, to watch, to listen, and to be still and know.
