Mountains and Valleys

Don’t you love being on top of the world!  The air is fresher, the beauty unspoiled.  Tranquility greets us at every turn.  We visit the mountains and tell ourselves that we wish we could live there forever.

A few of Jesus’ disciples experienced that very feeling when they were taken to the Mount of Transfiguration.  The story is recorded in Luke 9.  While there they saw Moses and Elijah.  Can you imagine their overwhelming excitement at such an experience?  They must have been about to explode with the thrill of it all.  In fact, in their enthusiasm, they had a suggestion for Jesus.  They said to Him in Luke 9:33, “It is good for us to be here; let us make three tabernacles: one for You, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”   They meant well, but what they failed to understand is that God’s tabernacles are not stationary objects; they are meant to be moving.

You and I are God’s tabernacles today.  He lives within us by the very power of His Holy Spirit.  His desire is that all should come to understand and know who He is and that He can take broken lives and make them whole, no matter the scars already sustained in life’s battles.  God desires that everyone come to know that He can give all the strength they need, all the courage, all the wisdom, all the guidance, all the peace.   They only need come to Him, and you and I, as His tabernacles,  have the privilege of pointing the way.

If we all stayed on the mountaintop, reveling in the sheer excitement of what we experience there, and refused to go back down to the valley, then how would others know what God has to offer them?  You see, it’s in the valley that tragedies take place, where grief occurs, where pain stabs at our hearts.  It’s in the canyons of despair and the ravines of strife that Jesus longs to shine the light of His love and hope into all of life’s hurting places.

You and I are renewed on the mountain that we may then descend, sharing the hope and love of God Almighty.  When one life is changed in the valley, that they, too, may ascend the mountain, it puts climbing down every gorge into proper perspective.  Take joy in the mountain but never refuse the valley for it is there that the whispers of God are often heard best.