Changes everything

The San Gabriel Mountains from Vantage Pointe in La Habra Heights, California.

I've known it for a long time, but I couldn't put it into words.

Mountains on the horizon changes everything.

Ever since I moved to Southern California, the mountain skyline has inspired a sense of awe in me. You may have read in this very blog how my first clear view of the San Gabriel Mountains ended with me in my car driving as close to them as I could. I can't resist them. It's inside me. I'm under their grip and I don't know if anything could ever change that.

The view of mountains on the horizon changes everything. I used to have a long drive home from work; again, this very blog's first post described it. I'd be driving in the hills for almost an hour, and then when I crested one singular hill in Anaheim Hills, the entire mountain range would come into view, and then...then things changed. No matter what album was playing, what train of thought I was on, what song I was composing in my head, it was interrupted by what my eyes saw, During snowy season, this was even magnified (if such a thing is fathomable).

That view changes everything. And one day, I put it all together and realized WHY the draw was so strong. Why I was like one magnet and the mountains were the other magnet, and I was pulled towards them by the laws of physics.

We often are caught up in our own small worlds, with blankets of security that are really nothing at all. We live in this false reality for so long that we truly lose touch with the big picture, with the REAL. When I see the spectacular snow-capped San Gabriel Mountains on the horizon, looming impossibly larger than anything I know, it reminds me that there is something bigger in the world than me. Those mountains dwarf me. My human mind struggles to even perceive their grandeur. I've even stood on the very peak of Baldy almost 10 times, and once on the peak Istill expect to see human outlines on the endless horizon (flat as a pancake), and when I see someone only a mile away and a few thousand feet lower altitude on the same trail I just hiked, I barely can distinguish them from the rocky, sandy, barren landscape. I just can't put the pieces together.

When we see that horizon, we realize there is something bigger than ourselves. There is something that exists on our planet that exceeds our understanding. There is something that dwarfs the minute details of our lives. There is something that can bring us to our knees and stir something deep within us even during our coldest and darkest of days. We were MEANT for more. This can't be all there is. I see that skyline and something inside me, deeper than I can know, is stirred up. My immediate physical reaction is "GO TO THE MOUNTAINS" but what I find there is not just physical beauty. Yes, my senses are overwhelmed: the smell is fresh, the sights are a spectacle, the sounds are peaceful and the touch is...real. But it all points to a larger thing.

I cannot live this life on my own. I am incomplete as an individual. I cannot accomplish great things alone. I see the mountains and I immediately realize my need for a Savior. Without a supernatural, extraordinary interaction, I fail. But in all of God's goodness, He provides those momentary signs and reminders. For me, that is the mountains. My body struggles and strains to conquer just one of those peaks, using a trail that was forged by earlier humans and is clearly the most accessible, easiest way to do a thing such as this. Let me never forget that I am powerless against such a force. That the very Thing that carved each ridge and wrinkle into the earth's surface is the same Thing that died a painful death on a cross so that I could have life, and life abundantly. The Thing that lets me live with freedom and without fear. The Thing that became the only human to overcome the grave, that thing that causes we humans the greatest pain that we know.

Oh Thing, oh Thing named Jesus the unchanging creator God, I need you and I cannot live without You. I thank you for your constant, looming, unforgettable reminders of Your love and power. I cannot help but worship You.