First Sunday of Advent (A) – Isaiah 2:1-5
Mountains attract and fascinate us. When I was a child, my parents would sometimes make weekend trips to the White Mountains of New Hampshire. I loved going there. Ever since then, I have enjoyed every chance I have ever had to go up to the top of some hill or mountain and witness the views on the way as well as from the top. 
The mountaintop experience draws us out of ourselves. We see things from (literally) a higher and broader perspective. The town of Bar Harbor looks quite small from the top of Mount Cadillac. Sandia Crest looms a mile above the city of Albuquerque, New Mexico. That city seems to go on, block by block, almost forever when you’re in it. From the Crest, however, it looks like a mere patch of moss on the huge, sandy-colored rock that is New Mexico.
The mountaintop humbles us and our sense of greatness. It reveals to us a greatness beyond ourselves which nonetheless is present to us and exhilarates us. It is no wonder that so many ancient cultures imagined that mountaintops were the homes of their gods. Continue reading “The Lord’s Mountain”