The Feel of the Mountain Top

Have you been to the mountaintop? Have you felt the presence of God? Have you had moments when the joy of God was very close at hand, and you felt it?

Did it stay that way?

While I may live on a mountain which requires salting and scraping before the bravest soul should venture down it in the snow, I do not live on the mountaintop emotionally. No one does. We live in the ordinary. We live in our routine. We spend most of our time not in either the valleys or on the mountaintops, but instead on the plateaus.

I was reading an article in the LOVE Community (Limestone-Ohio Valley Emmaus Community) newsletter written by Bill Henry, their Assistant Spiritual Director for one of their walks. I would link to it for you, but I don’t seem to be able to do that. If you want to read the whole article, called Keeping the Feeling, click here, and then go to the October 2005 newsletter. A pilgrim asked him, “How do I keep this feeling?” He wasn’t able to give her an immediately satisfying answer, but wrote this article to try to answer the question later. The truth upon which he wrote the article is “You will not keep this feeling….While we will not always feel the reassuring presence of God, that changes nothing. Jesus told the disciples, “I will be with you always.” Will you always feel his love and presence? No. Will it ever change? No.”

Steven Curtis Chapman has written a song called Moments Made for Worshipping. Here is the chorus:

This is a moment made for worshipping
Cause this is a moment I’m alive.
And this is a moment I was made to sing
A song of living sacrifice
For every moment that I live and breathe
This is a moment made for worshipping.

From the second verse:

When I’m feeling loved and happy.
When I’m feeling all alone.
When I’m failing to remember
all the love that I’ve been shown.
Every beat of my heart
Is another new place to start

From the rising of the sun
To the setting of the sun
The name of the Lord is worthy to be praised.

Don’t wait to FEEL God. Faith, is says in Hebrews 11, is to be certain of the things we cannot see. Perhaps we could also say that faith is to trust in what we cannot feel. We can’t always FEEL that God is there. But we can KNOW that God is there. The knowledge of God’s presence is much more reliable (since it is based in God’s promises to us) than the feeling of God’s presence (since feelings originate from us).

So, Kim’s advice for the day? Relax. God’s there, whether you can feel him or not. And every once and a while, when we’re blessed with a mountaintop experience, our feelings catch up with our faith.