THE VIEW FROM THE TOP

By Shirley Wiggins

“Be strong and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for and hope for and expect the Lord!”  Psalm 31:24 (Amplified Bible.)

Yesterday I received a card from a precious loved one that read:

“When the going seems all uphill… Just think of the view from the Top!     ‘You’re doing great’ ”

What encouragement!  And, who doesn’t need to hear the words, “You’re doing great,” when you don’t feel great in any sense of the word?

For at least a month all my days had felt like an uphill climb and the hill seemed to loom higher the farther I tried to see into the future.

On the front of the card was a picture of a mountain all covered with snow.

It reminded me of the mountains in Glacier National Park, and a recent summer road trip to Canada with days and days of beautiful scenery, and fun fellowship with good friends.

We traveled together over 7,000 miles by plane, train, and Jeep, with breathtaking views from multiple altitudes, each one unforgettable.

If I had to choose, I would have to say the view from the top would always be my favorite.  Both physically, and spiritually, speaking.

If we didn’t have the valley experiences when life seems hard and dark and difficult, would the mountain top view be as exhilarating?

Of course, I don’t know the answer to that rhetorical question since life holds so many unavoidable valley experiences:  grief and loss; uncertainty and indecision, fear and pain – struggles that can sometimes seem unrelentingly here-to-stay.

I do know that it is often hard to find the hope in a particularly devastating emotional pit where some of life’s disappointments can put us in a deep valley of depression.

The future seems filled with dense fog and you do indeed fear that any glimpse of light at the end of the tunnel truly is a train speeding full throttle toward your face!

Nowhere to run and nowhere to hide:  vulnerable, exposed to whatever ill seems bent on falling on your head at any moment.

How do you get out of the valley?

You keep climbing up.  Take the next step, and the next and the next.  And, take hope; take heart.  To “take heart” is “to gain courage or confidence.  Take courage.

Courage is “the ability to do something that you know is difficult or dangerous…”   “Courage is fear that has said its prayers,” attributed to an unnamed Vietnam war veteran.

Dragging yourself up out of an emotional pit can be a bit like climbing up the side of a steep mountain.  Difficult to say the least, but if the way out is the way up, then we must climb!

Let the next step you take be the one where you take hold of hope with all your heart:  Take the courage that gives confidence!

Just as life can’t be all mountain top experiences, spending too much time in the isolation of pits and valleys is a dangerous thing to our emotional well being.

We need to know how to take hope, take heart and take courage again after a devastating loss in life, or another disappointment  threatens to rob us of the joys of life.

There is always hope, because there is the God of hope, heart and courage and He always gives the strength to live through any valley experience.  With Him, there is always another beautiful mountain top view just around the next curve that life may throw at us!

“Be of good courage, And He shall strengthen your heart, all you who hope in the LORD.”    ---- Psalm 31:24.

Do you hope in the Lord?  “For in You, O LORD, I hope: You will hear, O Lord my God.  For I said, ‘Hear me, lest they rejoice over me, Lest, when my foot slips, they exalt themselves against me.  For I am ready to fall, and my sorrow is continually before me.”  ---- Psalm 38:15-17.

“For You are my hope, O Lord God; … I will hope continually, and will praise You yet more and more. … You, who have shown me great and severe troubles, shall revive me again, and bring me up again from the depths of the earth.  You shall increase my greatness, and comfort me on every side.”       --- Psalm 71:5, 14, 20-21.

We hold on to hope in the God of the Bible, who provides for the salvation of our souls:   “For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he see?  But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance.”    Romans 8:24-25.

The view from the top of God’s Word is glorious.  We stand upon the promises of the Bible – they are the bedrock of hope.

“For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope. … Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”  Romans 15:4, 13.

We do not lose heart…. We do not give up our courage – it is because we believe in the God of the Bible, and the salvation of His Son, Jesus Christ, that we hold on to hope with all our heart and He infuses into our very being the courage of life that will never fail us.

“But let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet the hope of salvation.  For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us,…”  1 Thessalonians 5:8-10a.

“… that … we might have strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope that is before us.  This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters the Presence behind the veil, where the forerunner has entered for us, even Jesus, …”  Hebrews 6:18-20a.

“And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.”                   ---1John 3:3.

Oh, yes, life is filled with valley experiences, but our God is able to pull us up, up, up with His righteous right hand.

We let our hearts take courage through our prayers to the God of heaven, and we soar in the very strength and power of God in and through Jesus Christ, Who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  (John 14:6.)

“Wait and hope for and expect the Lord; be brave and of good courage and let your heart be stout and enduring.  Yes, wait for and hope for and expect the Lord.” ---    Psalm 27:14 (Amplified Bible.)

You’re doing great!