David Wells
Guest Blogger
“Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted on the earth!”
- Psalm 46:10
Throughout my life, I have taken many car trips with both friends and family. In each instance we always had a general idea of what we were going to do. But as my buddy Kip Packer drove down Alcoa Highway towards the Smokey Mountains early on May 6, any plan we had come up with died. We were on our way to a mountain of darkness, for its green tress were made black by the lack of sunlight. Its silhouette barely stood out from the cosmos and as the five of us in Kip’s car got closer, the roads were less and less crowded. Only the headlights of the car let us see the path ahead.
Before the trip to the mountaintop, I hardly even knew anyone in the car. Kip I often talked to at VFC, but I never interacted with him one-on-one before. Katie Roach and I just had our first extended conversation earlier that morning at an IHOP. Jackie Newman, a junior, I met at Vision Quest and said hi to in passing. Shawn Irwin I only remembered from the VQ Talent Show playing harmonica with Katie and his girlfriend onstage.
One would think our talks in the car would be “getting to know you” type of stuff, at least if anyone was talking to me. But all I could head aside from the music was the Gospel. God was on the tip of everyone’s tongue, including mine, and immediately the people I barely knew became my best friends. The Gospel of Jesus Christ binds all Christians together and it binds them closer together than every temporal friendship ever made. All born in Christ share a treasure greater than anything ever made on earth. We are co-hears of the grace of God (1 Peter 3:7).
Forever will the memory of our time on the mountain live in me, for from our arrival onward God’s continuing work and presence become more apparent. Kip parked the car at three a.m. and as soon as the car turned off, all we could hear was Creation. The music of Explosions in the Sky bowed out to the simple hymn of the nighttime breeze on our skin as we began our short hike. Shawn was kind enough to lend me a jacket and to bring two sleeping bags to the top. By the time we ascended the tower at the summit, we would need their warmth. Mountain has a tendency to nip at the soul.
After about half on hour, we got to the top and the view was spectacular. A couple of us went over to the north side and gazed out into the valley, where many lights littered to ground. I, however, could only gaze with wonder at the south, where the lights littered the sky. Just as I felt when I looked to the nighttime gulf two months ago, I felt insignificant. The mountains stood in the shadow of space as those great lights in the sky extended out for distances I could not comprehend. I could not help but just worship and pray to God silently.
How could anyone look to such a thing and not know that God was behind it? To my back the world of man was trying to take the stars out of the sky by lighting their land up with lights of a lesser power. On that side, the stars disappeared and if a man spent his whole life in such a place, he would not know that there was on outer space. Only when someone is on the rock can he see into the real beauty of Creation. Only when you set yourself on the Rock of Christ can you see the glory of God revealed. Though man tries to take the glory of God for himself, he creates a false reality and invents a false glory. Only Jesus can show us what and who God is (Luke 11:29-32, Matthew 7:24-25, John 14:1,6-7).
For nearly thirty minutes, I thought thoughts like this and was filled with the Holy Spirit. The peaceful tranquility came with Him coming to all of us on the mountain. I read some Scripture (Psalm 121 and 2 Corinthians 4:15-18), and Shawn just silently spoke about his love for the Lord. As Kip was saying, “I wish I could stop sinning” right beside me, the women sat up next to each other in a sisterly embrace. Why would anyone do that aside from God?
Three hours passed on that mountain as we froze together, I the almost stranger among them. Though we joked for a long time, our early morning getaway was all about God. From my late night prayer to the rising sun in the east and the drive back to campus, it was a glorious night. The five of us may not all hang out together again. But we will always have our time together on the mountaintop.
It is so easy for us to lose sight of the Gospel, for the darkness of sin clouds light so easily. It had a deafening power over us before salvation (Romans 3:23) and it still is with us. It does not; however, take a reunion or a trip to the Smokies to set us right. Christ has set us right, he bought us with His blood. When we set ourselves upon the rock, our house cannot fall. He is the mountain we all share, one that cannot be eroded by anything.
Oh, how sweet it is to be still and to know God! He is all sufficient! He is all satisfying! Whether we are single or with someone in marriage or anything in between, we are bound to Jesus for all eternity.
“For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will have the power to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord!”
-Romans 8:38-39
