I heard someone very wise preach a message several years ago
about “lapping the mountain”. How
all too often as followers of Christ we feel as though we are working through
the same stuff that we have been dealing with for weeks, months, and sometimes
years. How the scenery never seems
to change, and the so called “victory” that we have in Christ over our
circumstances just wasn’t won for us.
For many of us, myself included, having grown up in the
church only seems to add to the problem.
Because we “know the answers”… every should and shouldn’t in the book
seems to add the weight of guilt to every “familiar step” along the way. “Landmarks” are not defined as a
thing of comfort, but a thing of failure, a simple reminder that if we had just
done it better we wouldn’t be here again.
It was in this message however, that this wise man spoke of
a perspective shift. He spoke of
the fact that we may be “going around the mountain” but that if we took a
second to look around…. to look upward, we would see that we have moved higher
up the mountain and the “valley” below us doesn’t quite look the same. It is like a spiral staircase to the
peak of the mountain. We sometimes
get “dizzy” and discouraged because we feel like we have “seen all this before”
but if we look around us, look out and upward, we would see that there are
objects within our view that weren’t there before. That God has given us treasures…. Gifts…. To add to our “journey”.
Where Satan traps us however, is when he gets us so focused
on where we are going, how fast we have to get there, and how to do it with the
least amount of scars, that we don’t take the time to see the blessings or
gifts that God has given us in the process. We are only focused on the fact that this uncomfortable
season is all too familiar, and that we
have “blown” it again.
In this we
miss what some people have called “the joy of the journey.” I know, I know, it is an overly
used “Christianese” phrase that usually makes us role our eyes and leaves a bad
taste in our mouths, as if the person saying it never really experienced “the
journey” in the first place, or at least not the one that you seem to have been
on for years. However, if we stop
for just a second to contemplate the thought, we may find some revelation in
this sickeningly optimistic phrase.
What if such a thing were really true? What if there was joy to be found on
the journey? What if the whole
purpose of this trip had more to do with the journey itself, more than any
“destination” in particular? What
if we could set the guilt and feeling of failure aside for a second, and in
doing so realize that we grew deeper in intimacy with the Father than we ever
would have if we had went straight up the mountain, instead of taking the
“scenic” route around a couple of times?
Please know that in writing this blog, I have no way
“arrived” but I am learning… slowly but surely… I am learning that God is crazy
about us!! He created a whole world of blessings… both physical and spiritual….
And He wants us to have the fullest experience of both. Granted this doesn’t always come
easily, but usually to get to “fullness” we have to go through some pretty hot
fires. I might venture to guess however that we make it a whole lot
harder when we begrudge every step that we have to take along the way, because
we are mad that we had to take any in that direction in the first place.
In finishing up this blog there is something that I would
ask of you….Take a deep breath…. Let yourself off the hook for just a second
and take a moment and think about where “the journey”, the “3rd, 4th,
5th, or 100th time around the mountain ,has brought
you. Hopefully… prayerfully….
we’ll see that we didn’t just “lap the mountain” for the umpteenth time… but
that in doing so we got a little higher, a little closer, and went a little
deeper with the heart of the Father than we ever before imagined!
