On the Mountain Top

Perhaps it is God's plan to make me strong and use me for some great work or perhaps it is merely that I have been a slow learner and proven stubborn when learning the simplest lessons of life, but for some reason most of my life has been an uphill climb.

Taken by Alan Carillo, at the top of Mount Kenya

This past year has been a mountain top for me.  I discovered love!  God's love, how to love other people even when they don't care a whit about you (through His love), and the joys of faithful friendship . . .  Love is a wonderful thing.  It is to be the core of our being, the one thing that consistently identifies us as Christians (John 13:35).  And yet we fail at love all the time--or at least I do . . . .

The heights came into view when I realized that God loved me not only enough to save me, but also enough to have my best interest at heart in every detail of His plan for my life.  I did not have to earn a good life any more than I had to earn eternal salvation.  God wanted to give it to me.  The amazing comfort of such great love has enfolded me ever since.  It protects me from the opinions and actions of others, giving me the strength to love them when they need it the most, despite my own fearful heart.

But those failings . . . oh, they hurt!  Love is not a simple matter.  The apostle Paul, in four verses of his letter to the Corinthians, presented each of us with a lifelong challenge (I Cor. 4-7).  These virtues do not come easily, even to those of us who have Christ as our perfect model.  The world lacks models of true love and, in fact, do not even have a proper definition of love for others.  Self-love and idolatry and lust and numerous other harmful perversions of love reign in the cultural consciousness of our day.  Everyone is seeking love, but no one even knows where to look.  Modern love is a phantom.  It appears one day, unexplained, and vanishes again as quickly as it came.

But I discovered something on the mountain top.  On the mountain top, I found a cross.  Jesus said, "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me." (Lk. 9:23)  After listening to Dr. Carlson (refer to my last post), I realized that the world lacks a true definition of love and that Christians must find a way to teach them.  I must find a way to show them the love of Christ and how it shapes human love.  Then I was reading God at Work, by Dr. Gene Edward Veith, and he spoke of the cross as a daily component of our vocations.  Suddenly, I realized that my elation at reaching the mountain top had distracted me from the cross I found at the top.

Exulting in loving the lovable and in being loved by them, I have been distracted from Love's cross.  I must learn to love the unlovely and show them the unconditional love of Christ, while ever increasing in love for those already dear to me.  That is Love's cross, the cross I found on the mountain top of God's grace.