“There’s always the descent from the mount”, said an author once, while talking about the mountaintop experiences that go hand-in-hand with a life full of transfigurations and miracles – a life full of Jesus.
For a time, you live in a cloud of exhilaration, of God encounters, of clarity moments, of enlightenment to the ways you can be changed to look more like the Heavenly One.
With your head in that cloud, it seems impossible that you could ever feel anything other than what you’re feeling right at that moment.
What are sadness and despair and frustration and irritation and self-hatred when you live a life full of love, joy, peace, goodness, patience, kindness, and gentleness?
Surely you will always feel this full – those long ago days of emptiness are so far behind you that they almost seem like a dream, a figment of your imagination, an impossibility.
But then you descend the mountain.
Suddenly, you wonder if God was ever there, or if you just dreamed up those incredible experiences.
Could it be possible that the miracles, the feelings of exhilaration as you feel closer and closer to Him, never actually happened?
That has to be the only possibility, for right in that moment you feel lower than low – you feel as if you’re lost and stuck deep in a slimy pit with no way back to the closeness you felt with the Lord.
You try to scramble and claw your way back to that mountaintop, sweating and crying, but to no avail.
All that happens is that you just slide even farther from the top, deeper into the pit you feel yourself in.
Is it possible that as I sit here contemplating my upcoming return to my homeland, my fear is that I will be descending from the mount right into that slimy pit?
11 months of mountaintop experiences, of God encounters, of enlightenment, of seeing Jesus in everything around me – will that just turn into mush?
But then I also remember the moments in my journey of despair, self-doubt, attacks, warfare, irritation, hatred, and frustration.
My 11 months were not only mountaintop experiences, as much as I wish they had been.
Even in the middle of that incredible adventure around the world, I found that I had many moments in the valley down below the mountain.
So maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t the trip itself that caused me to have moments of God encounters – could it be that it was simply just God Himself who moved in my heart and pushed me to see Him in ways I never have before?
Which means, when I return home to good ol’ Canada, I will experience times in that pit of despair.
But after I’ve spent some time down there, God will lift me right back up, set my feet on the solid ground of that mountaintop, and show me how much I really learned about myself and about my Father in that valley.
And you know what?
That mountaintop will have absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I’m off in some country oversees serving the Lord – it’ll simply just be because I love Him and I’m obeying Him wherever the heck I am.
So bring on those valleys.
