TWENTY-TWO
Big Lake, Alaska
On p. 22 of Going Rogue Sarah writes as follows:
"One summer, I attended a youth Bible camp in Big Lake...Looking around at the incredible creation that is Alaska--the majestic peaks and midnight sun, the wild waters and teeming wildlife--I could practically see and hear and feel God's spirit reflected in everything in nature.
"I reasoned that if God knew what He was doing in this magnificent creation, how much more did He know about me? If He is powerful and wise enough to make all this and thought also to create a speck like me, there surely must be a plan, and He'd know more than I did about my future and my purpose. I made the conscious decision that summer to put my life in my Creator's hands and trust Him as I sought my life's path."
Ah, the beautiful words of a beautiful, free spirit and soul!!! I think Sarah bears witness, with these words, both to the splendor of what we may call the first order of creation, especially as it has been manifested and expressed in The Great Land, The Last Frontier, and also to the even greater splendor of what we may call the second order of creation, in which, specks as we are, as Sarah expresses it, we are nevertheless privileged to share in the Creator's work.
As I read this paragraph, and paint and picture in the court and hall of my imagination the loveliness of which Sarah speaks--royal peaks and mountains; the "everlasting" sun of midnight-tide; frolicking, playful, untamed waters; a thousand creatures of the wild singing the praises of their Maker--as I read about all of this bounty of wonder, what strikes me as most sublime, most noble?
Not the lofty peaks, as they raise aloft their arms to praise their Creator; not the miracle of the sun's reign in the depth of the middle of the North's night; not all the frigid, thundering, racing streams; not the myriad of beasts exulting in their youth's hour of strength and vitality; no, not any of these.
What is even more exalted than all these treasures and wonders?
I believe it is the glory of a young girl who early in her days learned the beauty of humility. In the very instant that Sarah realized she was a mere "speck," at that very moment, by the ineffable power of what we may call the Divine Irony, she began to grow into much more than a speck. Indeed, on the spiritual plane, she began to resemble, in the order of the soul, those very wonders of nature that she so movingly depicts in this paragraph!
Yes, yes, she was hidden away in a far northern corner of our nation. And the Lord silently began to raise up in that far-off land a heroic soul, whose indomitable spunk and spirit would stretch its arms heavenward, indeed closer to the Throne of the All-Highest than Mount Denali (McKinley) itself; whose light would shine and blaze forth the radiant beams of hope and courage in the very midnight hour of the United States of America, the dark night of the "reign" of barack obama; whose intrepid, free spirit would outrace the "wild waters" in its thundering puissance and power to refresh and restore a nation; and whose thousands upon teeming thousands of acts of kindness, of consideration, of charity to ordinary Americans would outstrip the very fecundity of the creatures of the wild!
Dixitque Deus: Fiat lux. Et facta est lux. "And God said, 'Let light be made.' And light was made."
Such is the "fiat" of the "first" order of creation. The Lord decrees it and it happens.
However, in the "second" order of creation, The Lord grants us the ineffable privilege of cooperating in His creative works. He asks us to say "fiat" to the plans He has for us; to the circumstances in which He places us; to the sufferings and sacrifices He asks of us.
If we say "Yes, Lord; thy will be done," if we say our own "fiats," and join them to the Divine "Fiat," we begin to grow into giants of divine grace! And if we cooperate to the very utmost of our strength and power, we become bearers of light to our fellow men and women.
So hath our Sarah done!
"Fiat" she said when she came up with a bum ankle on the eve of the Alaska state high-school championship basketball game, and played in spite of it.
"Fiat" she said when she was faced with a crisis of conscience as she served as chairman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, and resigned a lucrative position rather than countenance corruption.
"Fiat" she said to precious little Trig.
"Fiat" she said to Senator McCain's choice of her as his running mate during those fateful days of late August in '08.
"Fiat" she said re her failed teleprompter during her deathless RNC speech of 3 September, '08.
"Fiat" she said to the cruel silence imposed on her by the McCain campaign on the doleful, disastrous night of the "election" of obama.
"Fiat" she said to the circumstances that compelled her to resign the job she loved, the governorship of Alaska.
"Fiat" she said to the exhausting, draining, dangerous, but to those who saw her and spoke with her, unforgettable book-signing tour in the dying weeks of '09.
"Fiat" she has said to the duty of taking on and denouncing, in this crucial year of '10, the obama "administration," almost alone it often seems.
"Fiat" she has said so many other times in the course of her brave, noble, devoted, fearless life.
"Fiat" she will say if the Lord makes manifest to her His will that she should run for the Presidency of the United States of America.
Dixit Deus: Fiat; dixit Sarah: fiat---and a great light was kindled and raised up on high for our entire nation!!!!
