Recently I have been thinking about mountaintops. These are places one aspires to reach. This is because often it takes a great desire and discipline to accomplish a wilderness peak. One has to be wholly dedicated to giving extraordinary effort to make it all the way to the top. The rewards for not stopping partway are the simple exhilaration and joy of the accomplishment and usually an awesome view of God’s beautiful surrounding creation.
I have experienced this elation and wonder from summitting peaks in the Rocky Mountains of New Mexico, peaks in the Adirondacks of New York, and mountaintops in Pennsylvania. Each time the experience has been unique and magical.
Sometimes the special view achieved by making it to the top, whether a sunset or sunrise or crystal clear or misty layered landscape at midday, is so beautiful and awe-inspiring that no words can convey the experience. At that moment, all the exertion and consecrated mental effort to make it to the top is realized to be more than justified. I am sure many of you reading this blog have had this experience.
In a similar way, the exertion and consecrated mental effort we bring to the study of our relationship with God takes us to mountaintops in our daily experience. On these summits, we achieve an understanding of our real selves as the children of God made in His image and likeness and just how much God loves us. Here we view/witness all sorts of God’s goodness and beauty. Chief among these is healing. As we reach a peak in understanding God’s absolute goodness – and therefore our absolute goodness – all bad thinking (evil) and sickness melt away, just like the mist evaporates as one looks out from a mountain peak in the early morning sunshine.
One mountaintop I love to go up to every summer is in the Allegheny mountains of Pennsylvania. Near the top of this mountain is the sparkling water of Crystal Lake and a community of loving, active, youthful, thinking Christian Scientists. I find it a fabulous place to summit each summer and grow in my understanding of God and of myself as His beloved child. I bet that those of you who go to Crystal Lake Camps each summer have the same kind of feeling for this mountain and that crystal clear lake.
I look forward to climbing the mountain again and and seeing you all by the lake at camp this summer.
On the way up, be sure to stop and take time to smell the flowers!
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