“Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. And he led the flock to the back of the desert, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God” (Exodus 3:1).
There are three rules of mountaineering. First, it is always farther than it looks. Second, it is always taller than it looks. And third, it is always harder than it looks! For people who struggle with pride, mountains have a way of dealing with their overconfidence. Sir Edmund Hillary, one of the first men to summit Mount Everest, explained it like this: “It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.”
Mountains lift our eyes heavenward and draw out our hearts. People love to vacation amid magnificent peaks. They convey peacefulness that can never be discovered in the city. Mountains can relax you, invigorate your spirit, and challenge you to reach higher and further.
John Muir once said, “Keep close to Nature’s heart … and break clear away, once in a while and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.” That’s a bit of what happened to Moses when he fled to Midian from Egypt. The up-and-coming prince of one of the greatest kingdoms on Earth had lived amid the fascinating architecture of Egypt, with all its alluring pleasures of royalty. But the false religions of the land of the Nile left a mark. The military training led him to rely on his own strength. He needed a cleansing of the mind.
It was in the mountains that Moses met God. Here, the self-sufficient man felt humble in the grandeur of peaks that surrounded him. Anatoli Boukreev, a world-famous high-altitude mountain climber, once said, “Mountains are not stadiums where I satisfy my ambition to achieve; they are the cathedrals where I practice my religion.” For forty years Moses found God in the mountains of Arabia.
Alone in the wilds of nature, God changed his heart. Through tending his father-in-law’s sheep, Moses became a humble, patient man who learned to unselfishly care for others. When have you last been to the mountains?
Lord, may I take time in the mountains to draw closer to You, to see Your hand in the beautiful things You have created.
