Our Mountaintop Experience

My sister Ashlyn just completed her last week of high school and I couldn't be more proud of the young woman she has become! In order to celebrate, we packed up my car with way more luggage than appropriate for a simple week's vacation and set off on a roadtrip across California.

 

Our first stop- Salvation Mountain.

 

This beautiful testimony, found in the middle of the desert, was refreshing to the soul. Sculpted by Leonard Knight, it's truly an art masterpiece with the bold and recurrent message of:

 

"God is Love"



Mountains have always possessed significance as places of powerful, personal encounters with God. The very phrase mountain top experience originates from the Biblical accounts of God revealing Himself to Abraham at Mount Moriah (Genesis 22:2, 14), to Moses at Mount Sinai (Exodus 19, Deuteronomy 5), and to Elijah at Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18:24, 1 Kings 19:12).

But the greatest mountain-top experience of all time occurred on the Mount of Transfiguration: (Mark 9:2-7) "Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became radiant, intensely white, as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, and they were talking with Jesus... And [Peter] did not know what to say, for they were terrified. And a cloud overshadowed them, and a voice came out of the cloud, 'This is my beloved Son; listen to him.'"

Peter was so awestruck in this moment that he wanted to never let it go. He wanted to stay forever in the sheer beauty and power. But faith can not be put in a box, or as Peter later suggested- a tent. The disciples had to leave the mountain and shortly after Jesus gave them the command to go into “the world and make disciples of all peoples, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.”



As fellow disciples of Christ, we might not come face to face with God or see historic fathers of the faith, but we too can have mountain top experiences- "a temporary, uncommon encounter with God that is meant to give us a fresh awareness of His reality and nearness."

As amazing as these experiences can be, I believe it is important to remember that they are meant to strengthen us for the journey back down. They sustain us so that we can share the Gospel message with others. Abraham had been to the mountain. Moses had been to the mountain. Elijah had been to the mountain. Jesus brought the disciples to the mountain. They came back changed and ready to work for God's vision. Our perspective changes as our personal problems are left on the dwarfed landscape and we are made aware of the grandeur of the God whom we serve.

In his famous speech, Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop."

Are you ready to not only go to the mountain, but return to serve God's kingdom? Because as dazzling as the mountain top is, there is much work that still needs to be done.