Mountaintops and Valley

Easter festivities over the weekend were a joy. Monday, however, has come again - back to the grind of everyday life. It feels like sliding down a slope from the mountaintop and landing with a thud in the valley.

I experience mountaintop moments and do not want to come down.

• Spiritual Moments: a conference or a special worship service - extraordinary times when God opened my eyes to His glory and wonders.
• Professional Moments: new concepts and procedures learned at a medical conference that needed application in the emergency room.
• Family moments: special times of tender sharing and relationship bonding that brought us closer together.

Those moments, however, are fleeting. Special times become lost in the maze of the valley. The success of the mountaintop experience is measured by how I live in the valley not by the invigoration at the top.

Jesus took His disciples to mountaintops - seeing Him walk toward their boat on water or calming the sea with a word, watching with wonder as the rotting flesh of a leper became whole, wondering just how that water turned into wine. Jesus then allowed them to walk in a frightening valley as His crucifixion neared. The disciples did not do well. (I would not have done any better.) Instead of guarding Him in Gethsemane, they fell asleep. Betrayal, disillusionment, and despair followed. They had lost heart. The mountaintop was lost.

As we return from Easter resurrection celebrations and enter into our daily routines, let us take heart. The mountaintop can be remembered in the valley. There will be challenges and valleys this week. But we can walk through them with the knowledge and power of the resurrection at hand.

"And the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you."                (Romans 8:11 NIV)

Sharing the journey with you,