Still Looking Up

It's funny how God holds us up when we don't even realize we need to ask Him to...

I'm not feeling very eloquent tonight -- it's the end of a long day, and a long week, or three long weeks -- but I was just thinking about why I started this blog in the first place.

When I was a sophomore in college, I stepped out of the ordinary to spend three months studying & traveling in Ecuador. It was a collection of firsts: my first time on a plane, first time out of the country, first time being so far from home, for such a long time.

I was completely out of my element, both exhilarated and terrified. And because of it, I spent those three months coming to rely on God in a way I'd never realized I needed to before.

In the weeks before my team left on our trip, our college's chapel band had introduced a chorus based on Psalm 121. Adrift in Ecuador, I spent the balance of the semester anchoring my eyes on the Andes and singing that song to myself ...

I lift my eyes up to the mountains
Where does my help come from?
My help comes from You,
Maker of Heaven, Creator of the Earth
Oh, how I need You, Lord!
You are my only hope,
You're my only prayer.
So I will wait for You
To come and rescue me,
Come and bring me life...

The simple reality behind that Psalm -- that whatever I faced, no matter how large it loomed, God was bigger -- got me through a challenging 3 months in a foreign country. Several years later, when I moved away to Denver, Colorado for grad school, that same perspective -- reinforced this time by the breath-catching Rockies -- kept me going when I wanted to quit. Kept me believing when I wanted to give up. Kept me, my problems, the world, and God, all in proper perspective.

Planted now in northern Indiana, there are no visible mountains to remind me of the God behind them. But I have only to close my eyes to see either familiar mountain range firmly fixed in my memory. And, because it became such habit -- in the precious years I lived in the mountains' shadow -- to look up at them in midst of the dirt & sweat struggle of daily life, the practice remains with me still. Only now, it is the eyes of my heart I'm lifting-- up to the rugged beauty of the mountains, and beyond them, to the God who made us both them, and me. He walked with me through each step, each season, each shift of dark & light then ... I trust Him to do so again.

That's why I'm writing here: for perspective. To remind myself -- and anyone who happens to be reading along -- to look up. There is more to life than what can be seen. Yet sometimes, God favors us with a glimpse beyond the veil to another country that lies beyond. Countless times I believe I've almost caught sight of it ... and then it's gone. But no matter how dark it gets, or how brief and distant the glimpses, I keep watching. And waiting. And I keep looking up.