Mountains have always intrigued me. They captured my heart when my family first came to California in 1970. I sat in the back of my Dad's old Buick pouting about leaving my friends in Ohio, but once we hit the desert regions of Southern California, and I got my first glimpse of those beautiful breathtaking mountains, well, I vowed never to leave this place right then and there. I couldn't imagine being anywhere that I could not take in the splendor of those mountains.
I've always thought about how much some of the mountains look like dinosaurs who just gave up and laid down, and then were forever entombed as great majestic mounds of beauty. I look to them and think about how cool the air is up there; I think about how tall they are, and how wonderful it would be to stand on the top of the mountain with my face reaching towards God.
When there's snow on the mountains, I watch for the changes in the seasons, and remember my childhood in Ohio. All I think about that is, thank God I can see the snow up there and not have to be in it. I am still guilty of thinking that folks who make a run for the mountains as soon as the snow hits are crazy. Skiing down the mountain slopes, driving in the slippery muddy goo that snow brings, I cringe at the thought of battling those snow chains on the car tires ever again.
What can I say? I love the mountains, they bring me a comfort that I can't explain. Looking out on the vista in front of me this morning, I envy the view my son and his family has of the mountains every morning. I'm taking in every minute of this, and taking the memory of it home with me.
I was thinking about how God must like mountains, too. He had a lot of meetings going on, on mountains. He had a holy mountain, He spoke of mountains blessing people with their abundance, and at the end of the Bible, in the book of Revelation, He even took John the Revelator up to a mountain to watch the Holy City of Jerusalem come down out of the heavens. It seems kind of cool to think that God likes mountains as much as I do. After saying that, I would probably even venture a guess that He likes them so much more than I could ever be capable of liking them. But I do love mountains that I don't have to climb.
Let me encourage you today to take a moment and look closely at the mountains around you. If you live in a place where mountains aren't part of the landscape, then I challenge you to pull up a picture of a beautiful mountain range and ponder it's wonder. Think about the world's highest mountains, and lowest peaks, and let the beauty of the mountains come to you.
Think about this...the God that created these mountains is so much bigger than any of those peaks...and those peaks are giants before us. The God that gave those mountains their height and splendor also made us, and lives inside us, in our little tiny hearts, in our little tiny heartbeats...yet He speaks from mountaintops as if they were pebbles. Take time today to contemplate the Lord God who made the mountains. Let Him speak to your heart as you gaze at a tiny part of his creation, the mountains.