Mountain Peaks, Valleys, and Everything in Between

"But as for me, I shall walk in my integrity; redeem me, and be gracious to me. My foot stands on a level place; in the congregations I shall bless the Lord" (Psalm 26:11-12)

I was sitting this morning in my favorite auto repair facility, beloved, waiting for the mechanic to finish servicing my car so that I could get on my way. As I waited, I could hear the roar of a fighter jet flying overhead, an all too familiar sound for those of us who live near Air Force bases. The pilot streaked across the sky with his plane on its side, seeming to be only a few hundred feet above the place where I sat. I quickly walked outside to catch a glimpse of his rehearsals. As I stood and watched, he put his jet into a steep vertical climb, afterburners full, stretching skyward until he disappeared into the high ceiling of distant clouds. It was as if he had flown straight into the presence of God!

As I continued to watch, suddenly he appeared again from that same cloud cover, this time with the nose of his aircraft pointed straight at the ground, all the time performing a slow controlled spiral as he plummeted toward the earth. I almost held my breath as he slowly leveled out and flew a straight course toward the horizon, his aircraft once more parallel to the ground. In just a few seconds he was out of sight and I did not see him again.

As I reflected on what is always for me an exciting experience, suddenly a spiritual parallel began to take shape. How often we see Christians who live from "mountain top to mountain top," always spiraling skyward emotionally in search of a new height to ascend, always looking for a new level of spiritual "high" to achieve. These are those believers for whom "valleys" simply do not exist and when they do occasionally come, these dear saints seem incapable of dealing with them because their focus is always on the spiritual heights of personal experience.

Others by contrast are "valley" people, the realists for whom there are no mountain tops, no exciting flights upward to new heights of Christian experience. They are like the aircraft whose nose is pointed to the ground. Valleys are all that they know so valleys are all that they see!

For both types of Christian I would encourage a closer look at the psalmist's statement: "My foot stands on a level place." It will not be the mountain tops of spiritual excitement nor the valleys of spiritual somberness that make us the effective servants of Jesus Christ which He wants us to be, beloved. It will be the "level flight" that results from our choice to walk in our integrity as did the psalmist. We will praise God for the mountain tops when they come and we will praise Him for the valleys that try and prove our faith. But always, always we will fly straight and level in the integrity of those whose lives are sold out to Jesus Christ. As someone much wiser than I once observed:

"It doesn't matter nearly as much how high you jump in church as how straight you walk when you come down"

Amen!

Ron