More On Mountains

This past spring, Florence and I got to spend an entire week in a cottage in the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina (thanks John and Lee).
By the way, their cottage is called ‘The Roost’… cats and people aren’t the only creatures who like the heights. Even chickens like to be up there! I took this shot while we were there.

In light of all of the thinking I’ve been doing about ‘high places’, I have to post a picture here of the ‘Holy City’… “… beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is Mount Zion… the city of the great King.”

One day about eight months ago now, I got to stand on the Mount of Olives and look over Jerusalem (Mount Zion – ‘the holy city’) just like Jesus did on more than one occasion. There is something very moving about standing in places where Jesus stood, seeing what he would have seen, and thinking about the things that he said.

I probably don’t need to tell you that Nova Scotia is a long way from Mount Zion. When I was a kid growing up I didn’t have a mountain to climb, so I climbed trees instead. Sometimes I would just climb up a tree and sit there and study everything below from a new perspective. I can remember spending long periods of time some days just sitting in a tree! Did I mention that I have strong melancholy traits in my personality?

I guess there are lots of reasons why ‘high places’ hold a fascination for me; for us. I guess they can somehow make us feel closer to God. They can cause us to feel safe. But, for me, I think that more than anything, I just like being able to see things from the top. It is a vantage point like no other. Things look different when you’re looking down on them. Things make sense that don’t make sense when you’re ‘too close’; when you can’t see the forest for the trees.

I think about the Patriarch Job and how he struggled to make any sense out of what was happening to him in his life and I think about how, when God finally speaks to Job out of the storm (probably about how Job felt about his life at that time), He says things like…

“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundations … stretched a measuring line across it… the earth takes shape like clay under a seal; its features stand out like those of a garment… have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth… do you know when the mountain goats give birth…?” (Job 38:4,5,14,18 ; 39:1)

In fact, the whole book of Job gives us a kind of ‘top down’ view of life and I can’t help but think that this is intended, to humble us on the one hand, and yet, lift us up at the same time.

My mother was a quilt maker, and I remember, as a kid, crawling under the quilt frames stretched out in our dining room. You had to crawl under it because it took up the whole room (we didn’t own a big home) and to get from the entrance and the kitchen to the living room, or the bathroom!, you had to crawl under. When you had to go, there was no other way to go! And I remember looking up and seeing all of the seemingly random and unattractive pieces of thread, and what-not, on the underside of those quilts. How different they looked from the topside. Nothing seemed to make any sense or have any rhyme or reason from the underside but when you looked at the same quilt from above, from the top down, the beautiful patterns were all strikingly visible – same thing, different perspective.

All of this is meant to humble us. All of this is meant to cause us to trust in the One who ‘sits enthroned in the heavens’; the Creator God who is all powerful, all loving and all knowing.

Those who believe in Him have hope, because He is a great (big) God.

“He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”
Isa 40:29-31