I WANT TO LIVE ON THE MOUNTAIN
I love mountains. I love summits where I glimpse the swath of our stories and see God’s goodness in high relief. I want vistas instead of places where I have to claw at my circumstances to try and see God. I would live there if He let me.
But life isn’t mountains. It is mountains and valleys and caves and deserts. Climbs don’t always lead to a view. People fall in love. Families fall apart. Everything that holds together is grace.
And then there is Jesus. Who is faithful when we don’t feel him. Constant when we don’t want him. Jesus, who does not make his presence contingent on our emotions.
Thank God. Because it means that the Jesus who seems absent in our pain holds us when we are too numb to feel desperate. The same Jesus who seems unloving engraves our names in nail scarred hands.
And he doesn’t wait for us to climb.
JESUS MEETS US WHERE WE ARE
He comes to us in caves, when we feel like Elijah: despondent and ready to give up.
He comes to us in deserts, when we feel life Moses: ashamed of our past and wallowing in self-doubt.
He comes to us on broken roads, when we’re wandering like Saul: blind and angry in our unbelief.
And he comes to us in the middle of our meaningless routine, when we feel like Peter: scaling fish; knee deep in much; scraping out the day one hour at a time.
When summits are a memory and mountain top views have been forgotten, God is not far. Hopeless or dry or dark or bored – caves or deserts or doomed roads or boats – we are in a place where He loves to dwell. I do not need to climb a mountain for him to hold me in his grip.
He is as comfortable in the furnace as He is in green pastures.
God, I am not.
I hate the furnace. And I don’t understand why weary people are asked to lay down so many Isaacs. But I do know that sometimes my Isaacs are heavier than I know. Good things – hopes and dreams and blessings and prayers – can shift the longer I carry them. Silently, they change from the impetus for my trust to its object. They become the essence rather than the sign. And the things that I treat as anchors for my soul can really be millstones around my heart.
I cannot see. But God can.
Which is why when I come to him with my plans, He will graciously, patiently, relentlessly, pry them from my hands. He will not let me hold on to anything that keeps my heart from the only place it is really safe. Not for long.
It is a terrifying assurance.
THE ONLY ANCHOR THAT SURVIVES THE STORM
The taking can hurt. But when “all things” come, as they will – trouble and hardship and persecution and famine and nakedness and danger and sword; when they come dressed in cancer and miscarriage and loneliness and infidelity and depression and death and drudgery and divorce – only one anchor will hold. And only one anchor drives us deeper into who we really are in the middle of a storm.
And so He pries at our fingers.
I think my heart is secure. I think that my hope is settled on him. Which is why I tell God what he can take and when. As though I really knew my heart, or what I needed, or what was coming. But I do know what it is to be upended in an instant, and to find that words I had sung on Sunday turn to gravel in my throat on Monday.
I know, deep down, that I am blind. I do not know all the recesses of my heart. I do not recognize all the idols I carry. I cannot see the paper gods I have taped to my eyes.
But He does.
He knows the places we do not trust him and the things we really love. And since every swell that pours over our lives must first pass through his hands, He knows what we need to release. He knows what and He knows when. So He opens our fingers, little by little. One painful, merciful part at a time.
Until we let go of all our crutches and hold onto the only anchor that ever survives the storm.
Thank you for sharing! There are so many things that leave us wondering where God is. But, yes, we don’t have to climb the mountains to find Him because He’s been right by our side all along!
So true – I love how God runs into where we are. Mountains and valleys and everywhere in between.
Such a great capture both of what it means to walk through the valley times as well as the recognition that these valleys sometimes are needed (as hard and unwelcome as they may be) to pry loose our fingers from things we so often don’t know we are holding to
Thanks for sharing what connected with you. Whoever said taking candy from a baby was easy has not met my kiddos with iron grips! But I’m like that too. And so often, it’s only later that I realize how the things I’m grabbing onto keep me from holding onto what I really need.
Thank you for the much needed reminder — He is the only anchor that will hold!