My wife and I took a walk through the old growth forest in Michigan’s Hartwick Pines State Park last week, and came across this chapel. I’d forgotten it was there, but then my last visit there was more than 40 years ago. My family camped there frequently when I was growing up, and I’ve been wanting to go back ever since, especially to show my wife.

My iPhone was hard-pressed to keep up with the contrasts in lighting. The cross-shaped window, which blends in so well from the outside it’s almost hard to see, completely dominates the view from inside; for there is no other lighting in the chapel.

Beneath that cross there is the prayer pictured above:

Our Heavenly Father, Creator of all that is nature,
We humbly come to you in the midst of nature’s splendor,
To thank you that as Americans we are free
To worship as we please, work as we please,
And move about as we please to enjoy all that is nature:
Its mountains, its hills, its valleys, its lakes,
Its streams, and the living things that dwell therein;
We pray unto You that someday the world may be at peace
And all men be free to enjoy nature’s abundance.
We ask you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ
That we be guided to protect this priceless heritage
Which we, in America, are privileged to enjoy. Amen.

Perhaps at the end of the prayer the writer was thinking mostly about preserving the heritage of unspoiled nature; for Hartwick Pines contains the last 50-acre stand of virgin white pine in all of Michigan, and the park’s museums include heartbreaking photos of destructive clear-cutting. (There are far better ways to make productive use of a forest while conserving its beauty.)

When my wife and read it aloud there, though, we couldn’t help praying it as a prayer for the preservation of America’s freedoms — especially freedom of religion. Standing in a Christ-centered chapel in a state park, we were all too well aware of secularists’ attempts to remove religion from America’s public places. In one sense, they couldn’t do that here if they tried: not that the chapel could never be torn down, but that God’s glory would still remain stamped on every leaf of every tree in that majestic park. But secularists have taken special aim at the name and the cross of Jesus Christ, God’s greatest and clearest revelation of Himself.

So we finished praying the prayer aloud together, then for a while we sat in silence, enjoying the unhurried peace and beauty of the moment. Then we walked on, enjoying the magnificent glory of God, grateful that here in this place the name of Jesus Christ was honored, and praying it would always be so.