He'll be coming round the mountain ...

Ever gone looking for one of those cabins on the mountains? You know the type. Cabin sitting in the trees practically, probably in the Rockies or in the Smoky's. Carved from the logs in the ares. Spring rippling behind the house. A bunch of wrap-around decks to view it all. And can I get a hot-tub on one of those decks.

Today signals and end to the most roller-coast, amazing weeks of ministry in, uh, my ministry. This week we've celebrated the business of the church, with a Charge Conference. We've celebrated the sacrament of Baptism of a teen-ager. We're celebrating a wedding this evening. We've had youth events, and the vast majority of those youth don't go to our church except on Wednesdays. And the Bishop came to visit us.

Mountain-top living, or even renting, would be wonderful.

But I strongly suspect that when the day is done and the lights are extinguished, we start another year of work in our churches.

And what do we need to do?

A. We need to get everyone on the same page, with the same vision, with the same attitude, with the same goal.
B. See above.

There was alot of mountain top moments in Jesus' ministry. He was constantly going up on the side of one of those craggy things that surround the Sea of Galillee.

Just for example sake, here's what Mark (the newspaper guy of the Gospels) has to say about Jesus and mountains.

Mark 3: 12: Jesus went up on a mountainside and called to him those he wanted, and they came to him.

Mark 6:46: After leaving them, he went up on a mountainside to pray.

Mark 9:2: After six days Jesus took Peter, James and John with him and led them up a high mountain, where they were all alone. There he transfigured before them.

Mark 9:9: As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus gave them orders not to tell anyone what they had seen until the Son of Man had risen from the dead.

Here's the deal ... All of us, I believe, would love to live on that mountain with Jesus. But IT JUST AIN'T POSSIBLE.

We go from a mount of jubilation to a valley of humiliation fairly quickly because we live in the valleys most of our lives. Incredible emotional mountain-top experiences often flow directly into the valley of daily life where we meet opposition and failure and, well, unfortunate living at best. Our valleys are filled with unbelief, suffering, joblessness, helplessness, government shut downs, body shut downs, non-affordable health care and on and on we go.

Till our minds (and often our bodies) scream, "Stop the merry-go-round; I want to get off." Then we do. The very fortunate thing for all of us is that the Bible teaches one thing fairly clearly: God will walk with us through the valley of the shadow of death (or oppression, or any of the above). That's got to be enough.

I realize that next week probably won't match this week. But who knows except God? Who knows what will work in the church and what won't except God? Who leads people to churches except God?

Yea though I walk through ....

Ah, you know the rest.