Mary the Mother of JesusSample

On a Mountaintop

Like Mary, I know that feeling of looking out on life and seeing it with new eyes. I know what it’s like to sit on the mountaintop and sing because the beauty, the wonder, of what God will do is so amazing that I can barely contain the joy of it. And I know what it’s like to sing like Mary and yet not realize that God is redefining what blessedness means to me.

I remember an afternoon in college just a few months after I’d surrendered my heart and life to Jesus. I biked out to a wooded hill miles from campus. There I sat among the tall dry grasses and hovering oaks and looked out across a half dozen small valleys filled with trees and shadows.

And there I thought and prayed and contemplated this God who had called me out of my old, ordinary life, into an extraordinary adventure with him. As I sat there, God drew my attention to another far-off peak, and then I heard what was like a quiet whisper in my soul. We are going there.

I knew God wasn’t speaking of a literal trip to the mountain beyond me. He was showing me my life. My life was to be a journey from this hilltop to a distant mountain covered with beauty.

But God was also showing me something else. He was revealing to me not simply a mountaintop but a journey. And the path he would take me on would lead first through the dark valleys below me. It would wind through thick trees and dense under-brush. There would be times I couldn’t see the sun. There would be moments I would believe I couldn’t go on. I would trip and stumble in the darkness.

And for much of the journey, I wouldn’t be able to see the mountaintop at all. But he promised to walk with me. And he promised that the mountain was there, whether I could see it or not. He promised to take me there.

Then I thought blessedness was seeing the mountain. Now I know true blessedness is walking in the shadows and always finding him beside me.