Moving Mountains and Filling Valleys

Recently my wife and I spent some time touring the land of my ancestors in and around Naples, Italy. This area is occupied by many different houses with styles and customs dating back centuries. The hills serve as transition points for these various homes between the valleys and the higher mountains with many olive trees dotting the landscape. As beautiful and impressive as these mountains are, they pale in comparison to the Rocky Mountains. Many years ago, I had the opportunity to spend a weekend driving in Colorado from Fort Collins to Colorado Springs via the Rocky Mountain National Park.  I can remember passing through the heart of the park and thinking that the Rocky Mountain range appeared as one big continuous series of mountains following each other in a seemingly endless pattern.  Similar to the ocean prior to a storm when wave after wave continuously make their way to shore seemingly without end.  My view of the Rockies extended as far as my eye could see with wave after wave of mountains at varied heights and patterns.  One can get a sense of the breadth and length of the Rockies when flying across our country.  It seems impossible that settlers migrating from the east to the west coast negotiated this terrain by foot, horse, and covered wagon.  One must admire the determination of those early settlers to pursue such an endeavor.  It must have taken an incredible amount of desire to persist for weeks in finding safe passage through the maze of mountains.  I imagine what fueled their search was the belief that what awaited them on the other side was a new life experience.  One that included a promise of peace, harmony, and prosperity.  But most of all living in a new community, initially consisting of those who shared the mountain crossing experience.  Eventually that community would expand to include people of different life experiences and different views.       

I see the struggle of those early settlers crossing the Rocky Mountains on foot as a good metaphor for some of the challenges our nation is facing today.  Challenges that will require an equal amount of tenacity and determination to cross over from the divisions we have today in our nation to one of common ground and common purpose with one another.  We too must make this journey in search of a new community of living.  That is one that is united, living in peace and harmony with each other.  A community comprised of different faiths but united in the purpose of living as one nation under God.    

Scriptures describe the event of John the Baptist, quoting the Old Testament prophet Isaiah, announcing the arrival of Christ’s ministry to earth.  He was announcing that God was about to begin a new redemptive work of relationship with all who would listen.  Relationship restoration first of God to man, second of men’s relationship to each other with such declarations as “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mathew 22:39).  That not being radical enough, He also declared this was one of the two greatest commandments.  (Talk about pressure – we have a lot of work left to do considering the state of our nation.)  To illustrate the redemptive work that was about to begin John used mountains and valleys as a metaphor.  “Every valley shall be exalted (raised up or filled), and every mountain and hill shall be made low (flattened or made smooth);” (Luke 3:5; Isaiah 40:4).  In other words, in the completion of God’s redemptive work, God removes all barriers that block the completion of that work.  I believe our nation needs a similar visitation by God.  I believe His redemptive work towards man was completed by Christ at Calvary.  What we are in a desperate need of is God’s redemptive work of people to each other, beginning with the communities of faith.  In other words, God can work redemptively bringing communities of faith together in the same way He works redemptively in individual lives to Himself within the various faith communities.  The only problem is there are mountain like barriers of our own making that both facilitate and reinforce the divide in our faith communities.  The great mountain ranges in our nation lend themselves to be a good metaphor for these barriers we are encountering today.  Some peaks must be flattened, and some valleys must be filled to clear a path for God to reconcile us to one another. 

In my years of ministry in the evangelical communities of faith, I have spent countless hours counseling, consoling, and encouraging men in their relationship with their wives and families.  Difficulties almost always have a lack of communication as the root cause.  Communication is expressed in many ways and in many forms.  I believe we cannot communicate enough in our relationships.  We of course communicate with our words and sentiments.  But we also communicate with our priorities, our transparency, but most of all our intimacy.  The more important a relationship is to us the higher priority, the more transparent, and the more intimate our communication will be in that relationship.  It has been my experience that those issues in a relationship (priority, transparency, and intimacy) are often sacrificed on the altar of social media.  The irony is social media involves all sorts of communication, but it steals us away from those critical relational priorities.  It is often done in isolation with no risk of consequence to what is said or to whom it is to or said about.  It fosters in a society a reckless form of communicating without guardrails full of opportunities to exploit one another.  But most of all it is teaching a nation to communicate absent of any transparency.  These are foundational principals for any meaningful relationship that are being sacrificed and modeled for all to accept that sacrifice.  This is an insidious danger to our culture, our most precious relationships, and our faith. If your children are still at home, if you haven’t done it already, I suggest carving out some time to talk every day with all devices shut down.  You will never regret it. 

I propose a metaphor using a mountain range and our scriptural reference to illustrate a method to promote unity in our nation.  Upon close examination of the mountains in our metaphor we see they represent those communication barriers that exist between communities, families, and individuals.  These mountains are not like the Rockies or even those in Italy. They are not as high, they are scalable, and they are permeable.  The valleys are well defined between mountains.  They are passable and it can be adequately distinguished where one mountain ends, and another begins.  These are mountainous areas that can be passed given time and patience.  Although passageways are not obvious; they must be sought out.  Once areas to proceed are identified one must proceed cautiously with patience. It should be noted that as we apply our scriptural reference to this metaphor, it is clearly stated by both John and Isaiah that the people of faith are to prepare the way, God does the constructing of the path.  In other words, in these pliable mountains of our metaphor, God can rearrange the geography by moving mountains and filling valleys to create a highway for God to achieve His purposes. In this case His purpose would be to restore unity in our nation. All we have to do is prepare the way as instruments of His grace.  How do we do that?  Talk more, listen more, invite more conversations in our lives.  Less alone time. Spend more time trying to communicate to others, starting with our families and then broadening our search. One person at a time, one family at a time, one community at a time leads to a nation of unity by God’s grace and our availability.

The older I get the more I realize that God frequently ordains moments in our lives when we have opportunities to impact the lives of others.  We do not have to go out and search for these opportunities they are all around us.  Let me give you an example. My wife and I frequent our golf club several times a week during the summer months.  Most courses are organized so that you can drop off your clubs near the starting point and then drive to park your car.  At our club there are about 8 to 10 guys that work on various days to greet and take your clubs for you.  Most of the guys are retired themselves and work for little money in exchange for free unlimited golf when they are not working. This year I made a personal decision to get to know the first name of each guy.  In so doing, greetings became easier and more casual.  Consequently, we have learned one fellow is struggling waiting for his pending hip replacement surgery.  Another shared with us his wife has struggled with cancer for twenty years and has an impending cancer screening coming up.  These are slight openings into the windows of their lives that came with a small effort to simply remember their first names.  Imagine the impact if all of us just started to reach out to others in our normal daily routine.  I think back now to the years of commuting in the Washington D.C. area.  If you added up the time I spent waiting for busses, trains, or other rides over 30 years it would be many days, maybe months or more.  I spent most of that time avoiding people, trying not to interact with anyone, comfortable in my own thoughts.  I remember that times of commuting are times of respite from an early rise and a busy day.  Especially when one pursues their avocation after work during ones “tired hours”.  So, we should not be too hard on ourselves in that regard.  But I could have done better.  Imagine if I tried to simply give a kind word or a pleasant greeting.  What if more of us tried with a simple pleasant interaction instead of living isolated, surrounded by people?  I believe God would move mountains if we did. That is, God would build a highway of relationship where once a mountain of non-communication existed in the valley of isolation. All we need to do is be an instrument of God’s grace with sometimes no more than a simple “hello”. 

[1] “Adrift” by Scott Galloway, P.118; Penguin Random House, 2022.