The area where I live was once covered over by glaciers. As the glaciers retreated, they carved out deep valleys.
Everywhere I look I see evidence on the landscape of the glaciers.
I have tried repeatedly to imagine what my area would have looked like way back when the glaciers covered everything. But no matter how much I’ve tried to picture it, all I can see is what is in front of me today. I just can’t picture what it would have looked like when the glaciers were here.
Here you can see Lake Sammamish. The glacier carved through the Sammamish Valley, and as the glacier retreated and melted, it left behind this large incredibly beautiful lake.
Here you can see Lake Chelan … another leftover glacial lake in a deeply carved valley. I’ve tried to picture what this would have looked like with a glacier … but I just can’t.
Here you can see Mt. Baker. I stood in utter awe as I gazed at this vista back in Fall 2021. The landscape before me was so vast! I felt so tiny! Mighty powerful forces had shaped this landscape! Forces so much bigger than tiny little me! Forces of water … and ice!
But how?? What did it look like?? I couldn’t picture it … I just couldn’t imagine it at all.
This summer hubby and I, along with our two kids, were able to travel to a small island in the North Atlantic. Our flight path took us directly up and over Greenland. As I gazed out the airplane window, I saw for the first time what I have so long tried to imagine. I saw what my area looked like when glaciers covered everything!
Here you can see a glacier carving out a deep valley … just like the valleys where I live! So that is what it looked like!
And you can see there are two arms to the glacier, carving out two valleys side by side. That’s just like the parallel valleys running north & south where I live! So that’s what it looked like!
Here you can see a glacier retreating and leaving behind a beautiful deep lake … just like Lake Chelan! So that’s what it looked like!
And then the glacial pack became deeper and deeper until I couldn’t see the valleys at all. All I could see was the very tops of the mountains peeking up from the ice pack.
So that’s why Glacier National Park looks the way it does. The very tops of the mountains were peeking up from the ice pack! And all those horizontal striation lines … that was the glacier grinding and carving its way along as it moved. I can actually see it now! That’s what it looked like!
And here you can see from the airplane that the land is completely buried underneath the dense deep ice pack.
As I gazed out the airplane window, I realized that I really wouldn’t have wanted to be there when the glaciers were doing their thing after all. It’s not very interesting … to be quite honest. All the beauty is buried underneath the ice.
In fact, the beauty hasn’t even come to this place yet!
The ice has to melt … and then when it does, the land is nothing but barren brown rock. Here you can see from the airplane where the ice has melted and the large lake below is probably what Lake Sammamish looked like, way back in the day. It would not have been very beautiful.
(as a side note, the water is so clear that even from several thousand feet up in an airplane you can still see deep down into the water, where the land plunges deep underwater along the edges. Amazing!)
It will take time for this lake to become beautiful, like the area where I live. It will take time for tree seeds to arrive. It will take time for the tree seeds to sprout and take root and begin to form a forest. It will take time for wildflower and shrub seeds to arrive. Everything that I love about the area where I live … is a result of time.
I have often told hubby that I think after the Flood (in Genesis chapters 6-8), God intentionally “closed off” sections of the earth, by covering them over with deep glaciers. Sort of like an auditorium or a big stadium having huge sections of seating roped off, in the outer areas, because they want the people to sit closer to the front.
I personally believe that God “roped off” sections of our planet with ice, in order to keep humanity contained to a specific area around the center of the globe. Sort of like “sitting closer to the front.”
Why?? Why would God “rope off” huge portions of the planet with ice so that people would not be able to go and settle there, and develop countries and nations there??
I personally believe it was because God wanted people to be able to hear about the good news of salvation through His Son, Jesus Christ.
Most of the human population was contained to a specific area around the center of the globe when Jesus Christ came and died to defeat Satan, sin, and death … therefore the message of this good news was able to spread to the most people possible!
As time has advanced, the population on our planet has grown! … and expanded! … resulting in the need for more space. And in turn, God has been opening up the previously “roped off” sections of our planet.
That’s my personal opinion on the glaciers.
So we sit here today. Nations are in turmoil. People bomb and attack innocent unsuspecting people. Political factions and divisions are ripping our society apart. It feels as if our world is falling apart!
And yet … there sit the glaciers over top of Greenland … a portion of our planet still “roped off” … vast topography still “undiscovered” as it’s buried deep underneath ice!
The wars … the fighting … the bombing … the unrest … all of that can’t touch this quiet, white glacial barrenness I saw from the airplane window. The elements of ice are more powerful! God is in complete control here!
And that same God is in complete control of the rest of the mess mankind has made out of the rest of the portions of our planet we’ve been given to settle!
God is in complete control! This earth is His!
“He gathers the waters of the sea into jars; He puts the deep into storehouses.” – Psalm 33:7
“The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.” – Psalm 24:1-2
“The Mighty One, God, the LORD, speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to the place where it sets. He summons the heavens above, and the earth, that He may judge His people. I am God. Every animal of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills. I know every bird in the mountains, and the creatures of the field are mine. For the world is mine, and all that is in it.” – Psalm 50:1, 4, 7, 10-12
