by Lee Hull Moses
—

Last weekend, my family took advantage of the fact that all four of us had Monday off and went for a hike. We’ve been having fun this year working our way through the North Carolina State Parks passport program – do you know about this? You can pick up a free passport book at any state park, and then collect stamps each time you visit a new park. The excitement of filling up those passport pages has pushed us to go exploring in places we didn’t even know existed. We’ve seen rivers and creeks, spiders and snakes, mountains and valleys. And we’ve still got plenty of pages left. State parks are the best. Any time I start to feel a little bit grumpy about taxes, I think about state parks.

Anyway, last weekend, we took a short hike along Falls Lake, on part of the mountains-to-sea trail. Even after almost ten years in North Carolina, this Midwesterner is still awed by a state that has both mountains and sea. Jonathan, my six-year-old, loves to hike, but his legs are still a little shorter than the rest of ours. Plus, he hikes like a six-year-old, which means he stops every few feet to examine a leaf or pick up a rock or jump off a stump. (Really, we should all hike like six-year-olds.) All of which means that this time, he and I ended up bringing up the rear, trailing a ways behind the rest of the family.

It was hot, and we hadn’t had lunch yet, and I could tell the crabbies were about to set in for at least one of us, so we started to sing as we made our way along the trail. We started with The Ants Go Marching, our usual hiking song, and moved to Peace Like a River, which seemed fitting, given the setting. When that was over, I started singing He’s Got the Whole World in his Hands. We did the usual verses:

He’s got the mommies and the daddies, in his hands,
He’s got the mommies and the daddies, in his hands,
He’s got the mommies and the daddies, in his hands,
He’s got the whole world in his hands.

He’s got the little bitty babies, in his hands…

Then (because we were still a long way from the car and lunch), I started making up verses:

He’s got Jonathan and Harper, in his hands…

He quickly got the hang of it, and soon we were singing about all our cousins, aunts and uncles, all four grandparents. Then we moved on to people we know from church, starting with the babies, of course….

He’s got Josie and Nola, in his hands…

He’s got Keegan and Kaden, in his hands…

We named teachers and adopted grandparents and friends, all in God’s hands. We sang about rocks and rivers and trees and mountains and spiders and snakes. We sang and we sang until we finally got back to the trail head, because there really is no end: He’s got the whole world in his hands.