"Let Us Go to the Mountain" by David Fulk
Monday, November 30
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord” (Micah 4:2).
Growing up, my family went to Colorado nearly every summer. Dad needed relief from the brutal heat and humidity of the farm. I love the mountains mostly for their beauty, but also for their ability to take my mind off the stresses and troubles left behind. Peace.
So it came as no surprise in late summer when, seemingly, everyone we know escaped to the mountains from the COVID confines of home looking for normalcy in the majesty of creation.
Today’s text is set in the mountains—a place to find God, to be taught his ways, and to walk in his paths.
Did you catch the water metaphor in verse 1 describing how people will go up the mountain? They will “stream” or “flow” to it. Have you seen and heard the water roaring down a mountain stream? It can be fast and deafening. Perhaps the writer wants us to consider that our need and determination to be with God sometimes requires gravity-defying intensity and power.
On the mountain we find God’s version of normalcy. Here is a place marked by learning, justice, no disputes or fear, where weapons become tools enabling growth and life, where differences are set aside.
Closing a year marked by the anxiety and sorrow of a pandemic, an election season’s reminder of how deep and bitter are the divides among people at home and around the world, our need for peace is immense.
The hope and promise of Advent are that the temple of God is no longer confined to the mountain. We are God’s temple—here, where we are. Already within us is a gravity-defying ability to find peace and let it flow to a hurting world.
David M. Fulk