Grace After the Mountaintop

In our Christian lives most of us have had what we would call a “mountain top” experience.  It was a moment where we felt particularly touched by and close to God.  It might have been at a retreat or camp or special service, but it was some moment where the reality of God broke through to us in a new and different way.  We wanted the moment to linger or continue unabated, but the service ended, the retreat was over and we had to reenter or daily lives.  While we missed the depth of that experience, God had in His wonderful grace shown us a glimpse of Him that would refresh us and sustain us in our walk with Him.  This happened to the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration.

Frederick Hosmer wrote a hymn, “Not Always on the Mount”, which catches the great importance of the mountain top experience for our life in the daily valley of living.  His first stanza reads, “Not always on the mount may we rapt in the heav’nly vision be;
the shores of thought and feeling know the Spirit’s tidal ebb and flow.” If it had been God’s intent for Jesus’ three disciples to ever be on the mountain top with Christ, He would have assented to Peter’s request to build tabernacles there for Jesus, Moses and Elijah.  However, it is God’s design that having been nurtured by the heavenly we communicate with the earthly.  Always on the mount rapt in heavenly vision is not where God will use us.

Hosmer continues with this thought in verse three.  “Yet hath one such exalted hour
upon the soul redeeming power, and its strength, through after days, we travel our appointed ways.”  Is the purpose of taking a refreshing nap to keep napping?  No.  Nor is it the purpose of such an exalted experience to keep clinging to the exaltation.  Our naps make it possible to carry on with the routines of life that demand our attention.  The needs of those around us are better attended to when we are refreshed with renewed strength.  So it is with that rapturous time with Christ.  It is our strength for days ahead.

In his last stanza Hosmer concludes, “The mount for vision: but below the paths of daily duty go, and nobler life therein shall own the pattern on the mountain shown.” What we are shown on the mount we live in the valley.  When we do this we extend God’s grace in Christ to the world He has placed us in to serve Him.  Our joy, our strength and our duty then is the grace of Christ and in that we remain on the mountain with Him.  

  The Friday Benediction

Until Monday, my friends, may the good God envelop you with His grace; may you prove the common confession of faith, “I believe in the holy Christian church and in the fellowship of the saints”, and may you be enriched with joy and hope as you exercise that confession this weekend.  Amen

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