The same helper, with the great tan and wearing summer clothes, was not finished yet! She excitedly said, “I’m not done yet! I have two more God-Connections that I found in Yellowstone National Park!”
Yellowstone National Park is well known for its hydrothermal features. In fact, the park has over 10,000 hydrothermal features! The helper explained that hydrothermal features are caused by super-hot water building up underground and escaping out of the ground.
There are five types of hydrothermal features readily visible in Yellowstone:
- Hot springs: Pools of hydrothermally heated water.
- Geysers: Hot springs with constrictions in their plumbing, which causes them to periodically erupt to release the pressure that builds up.
- Mudpots: Hot springs that are acidic enough to dissolve the surrounding rock, and typically also lack water in their systems.
- Travertine terraces: Hot springs that rise up through limestone, dissolve the calcium carbonate, and deposit the calcite that makes the travertine terraces.
- Fumaroles: These hot features, also known as steam vents, lack water in their system, and instead constantly release hot steam.
The helper said that she was most impressed by geysers. Over time the hot water pressure underground builds up tremendously because the opening to the surface is small. When the pressure gets to a certain point, the geyser explodes and hot water bursts out of the ground and up into the air.
The most famous geyser in Yellowstone National Park is named Old Faithful. The geyser erupts approximately every 90 minutes, but the time can vary from 50 minutes to 127 minutes. The eruptions can last from one and a half minutes up to five minutes long. The boiling water is shot into the air over 100 feet!
Old Faithful erupts like this all day every day, it has the most frequent eruptions of any of the big geysers!
Application for you and me:
The helper said that the God-Connection that she found is the word ‘faithful’. Just like the Old Faithful geyser can be depended on to erupt again and again, God is also faithful!
In the Bible in Isaiah 25:1 it says:
Lord, you are my God; I will exalt You and praise Your name, for in perfect faithfulness You have done wonderful things, things planned long ago.
Also in the Bible in II Thessalonians 3:3 it says:
But the Lord is faithful, and He will strengthen you and protect you from the evil one.
In the Bible in I John 1:9 it says:
But if we confess our sins to Him, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.
And in the Bible in I Thessalonians 5:23-24 it says:
Now may the God of peace make you holy in every way, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless until our Lord Jesus Christ comes again. God will make this happen, for He who calls you is faithful.
God is faithful! We can always depend on Him! He always loves us, He will never leave us, He is always working for our good, He always forgives us when we believe in Him and ask for forgiveness, and He is coming again someday!
If a tourist goes to the Old Faithful geyser and finds that they have just missed the eruption, they know they can wait for the next eruption.
We did not have the chance to see Jesus come from heaven and be born as a human baby a little over 2,000 years ago. We just finished celebrating the Christmas holiday, and the real meaning of Christmas is to remember and celebrate the birth of Jesus! The good news is that Jesus is coming again! This time He will not come as a baby, but He will come and snatch all the believers from this earth and take us to heaven. After the believers are taken from this earth, then God will deal with all the sin, and wickedness of the unbelievers who are left behind!
In the Bible in I Thessalonians 4:16-17 it says:
For the Lord Himself will come down from heaven with a commanding shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of God. First, the believers who have died will rise from their graves. Then, together with them, we who are still alive and remain on the earth will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Then we will be with the Lord forever.
As the helper had said before, the Old Faithful geyser cannot be predicted exactly, they can say ‘it will erupt soon’, but no one can predict the exact moment that it will erupt. It is the same way with the return of Jesus, we can see that the time is getting close, but no one can predict exactly when Jesus will return.
In the Bible in Matthew 24: 7-13 and verse 36 Jesus says:
Nation will go to war against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in many parts of the world. But all this is only the first of the birth pains, with more to come. Then you will be arrested, persecuted, and killed. You will be hated all over the world because you are My followers. And many will turn away from Me and betray and hate each other. And many false prophets will appear and will deceive many people. Sin will be rampant everywhere, and the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.
However, no one knows the day or hour when these things will happen, not even the angels in heaven or the Son Himself. Only the Father knows.
Unlike the Old Faithful geyser, Jesus will not continue to return many times. He came once as a baby, He will return to take the believers out of the world, and He will return to earth at the end of time to conquer and banish sin and wickedness. If you do not know for sure that you have given your life to Jesus and asked Him to forgive your sin, please do it today! You need to be ready for the time when Jesus returns for the believers. It may be very soon!