Mountains Make One Look Up

Mt. Baker

9" x 12"

Oil

Who doesn't love lifting their eyes to the hills?  Something about looking at a mountain does things for the soul.  You immediately come into the presence of something that is bigger than you are. You are reminded of a greatness and grandness that extends beyond the ordinary and daily round of life.  Your perspective is altered.  Your place in the scheme of things is proportioned to the majestic presence of something of enormous magnitude. There is something very solid and enduring about a mountain.

Mountains by nature make you look up.  There is a lifting of your gaze that can impact your heart.  Mountains are so full of metaphor. The writer of Psalm 121 spoke of looking up to the mountains on his way to Jerusalem.  But gazing at those mountains caused him to consider the Maker of those mountains as being the true source of his help.  We are all poor and needy in some way.  How reassuring to know that there is Someone mightier than your circumstances who is standing beside you and watching over you.  

I see Mt. Baker on every sunny day that I drive to work.  I love looking up at its immense mantle of snow and all the crevices around the peak.  I envision myself hiking up around it and exploring its wonders.  Most of all it reminds me of the truth of Psalm 121 and also of what Psalm 93 says about God:  

The Lord is King!  He is robed in majesty.  

Indeed , the Lord is robed in majesty and strength...

But mightier than the violent raging of the seas,

mightier than the breakers on the shore---

the Lord above is mightier than these!

(Watercolor study of an elk)

(Pencil commission in progress)

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul

And sings the tunes without the words

And never stops----at all.

                                                                                       ---Emily Dickinson.

Be brave and courageous!