The happiest families can be surprisingly competitive. And not just in moments of play and recreation when we compete against each other, in love and good humor. But all the more in the everyday “contest” to honor and bless one another.

“Outdo one another in showing honor” (Romans 12:10), Paul writes for the whole church, and such a vision begins at home. And yet the glory and joy of such a “competition” is far, far larger, and more fundamental, than even our homes and churches. We might view all of history as the divine Father and his Son seeking to “outdo one another in showing honor.”

“Service is greatness,” writes Donald Macleod, “and one may even ask . . . whether the persons of the godhead do not seem to vie with one another for the privilege of serving” (Person of Christ, 88). It is an astounding and holy contest to trace through the pages of Scripture, and the story of the world — a story of their glory that delights all those who have been welcomed into the greatest of families.

One Great Design — and Medium

To marvel at the pronounced other-orientation of the Father and the Son is not to minimize the God-centeredness of God but, rather, to go deeper into it. God made the world to glorify himself. This, in short, is God’s “one great design,” as Jonathan Edwards preached in December 1744, in a sermon called “Approaching the End of God’s Grand Design.” And yet how much more can we say than simply this? Edwards says more.

He also speaks of God’s “one grand medium,” saying, “The one grand medium by which he glorifies himself in all is Jesus Christ, God-man.” Another way, then, in fuller detail, to capture God’s one great design, says Edwards, is this:

[God made the world] to present to his Son a spouse in perfect glory from amongst sinful, miserable mankind, blessing all that comply with his will in this matter and destroying all his enemies that oppose it, and so to communicate and glorify himself through Jesus Christ, God-man.

God’s God-centeredness is not at odds with the centrality of Christ. In fact, we cannot have one without the other. One is the great design; the other, the grand medium. God glorifies himself through his Son.

Prompted by Edwards, then, it is amazing to return to God’s own word, see if the dynamic is there, and watch with delight as our Father and our Lord Jesus “vie with one another,” as it were, seeking to “outdo one another in showing honor.”

Father to Glorify Son

Consider first that unexpected attribute of the Son’s glory in the magnificent opening lines of Hebrews. In these last days, God has spoken to us in his Son, “whom he appointed the heir of all things” (Hebrews 1:2). Only after noting this appointment does Hebrews add “through whom also he created the world.” Before creation, the Father appointed his Son to be heir of it all; then the Father made all through him and for him. Paul backs it up in Colossians 1:16: “All things were created through [the Son] and for him.”

“The Father made the universe, and ordained all of history to unfold as it has, to glorify his Son.”

In other words, the Father made the world to give it to his Son. The Father loves his Son (John 3:35; 5:20) — with a love so full, so thick, so deep, so abounding that he overflowed to make a world to make much of his Son. The Father made the universe, and ordained all of history to unfold as it has, to glorify his Son, and demonstrate his infinite delight in and love for his Son. And that does not subtract, so to speak, from the Father’s glory, but only increases it in the increase of his Son. As the Father rightly pursues his glory in creation, he does so in and through the honor and praise of his Son.

So, in the fullness of time, the Father sent his Son, in human soul and body, visibly and audibly — as fully man, without ceasing to be God — to come, in stages, into this great appointed inheritance.

Son Glorified Father

Jesus, the God-man, lived his human life in utter dedication to his Father. Rightly did the angels proclaim “Glory to God!” at Jesus’s birth (Luke 2:14), as the glory of the Father came to the fore in the life and ministry of the Son. In his “state of humiliation,” from manger to cross, the man Christ Jesus did not “glorify himself” (John 8:54; Hebrews 5:5), but his words and deeds, and the effect and intent of his human life, were in full and glad submission to the will, and glory, of his Father. As he says without slant in John 8:49, “I honor my Father.”

“Jesus, the God-man, lived his human life in utter dedication to his Father.”

The Son loves his Father (John 14:31). And he lived as man, and strode toward the cross, propelled by his great delight in and love for his Father. He instructed his disciples to so live, and bear fruit, that his Father would be glorified (Matthew 5:16; John 15:8), and he taught them to pray for the hallowing of his Father’s name (Matthew 6:9; Luke 11:2). The night before he died, Jesus summarized, in prayer, his life’s work as “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do” (John 17:4). When he sees that at last his “hour” has come, Jesus prays, “Father, glorify your name” (John 12:28).

As the Son draws near to the cross, we marvel to see both glories — of Father and of Son — coming to the fore, not in competition, yet vying to accent the other. And strikingly, the Son’s lifting up, his coming into his glory as God-man, begins not only with his resurrection, but even in the shame and horror of being “lifted up” to the cross (John 3:14; 8:28; 12:32). Seeing that his hour has come, and that he will now move beyond his “state of humiliation,” and enter into glory (Luke 24:26) with his great final act of self-humbling (Philippians 2:8), Jesus says,

Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. (John 13:31)

Not only will the incarnate Son continue to glorify his Father, as he has since Bethlehem, but now he will do so in some new measure — and the Father too will glorify his Son. “So intertwined are the operations of the Father and the Son,” comments D.A. Carson, “that the entire mission can be looked at another way. . . . One may reverse the order” (John, 482). They glorify each other.

Father Glorified Son

In history’s greatest twist, the cross, in all its unspeakable odium and shame, begins the incarnate Son’s uplifting. Here, at Golgotha, the Father’s anticipated glorifying of the Son, as the Son spoke of, and prayed for, begins to be realized. The Father had glorified his Son, in measure, in his anointed life and ministry (John 8:54; 11:4), but now his glory comes decisively and fully at the cross, and in his rising again (John 7:39; 12:16, 23). Peter’s Pentecost sermon will recognize that God “glorified his servant Jesus . . . whom God raised from the dead” (Acts 3:13, 15). Or, as Peter later wrote, tying together the Son’s resurrection and glorification, “God . . . raised him from the dead and gave him glory” (1 Peter 1:21).

Christ’s resurrection, then — and with it, his ascension and enthronement in heaven — ushers in a new era, the age in which we live, of the church and the Spirit. If the Father seemed to outdo the Son in showing honor before creation, and the Son tried to outdo the Father in his earthly life, and the Father thrust the glory of his Son to the fore, in history, in the terrible cross and triumphant resurrection, we now — as happy sons of God and brothers of Christ — thrill as our Father and his Son strive all the more for the privilege of exalting each other.

Glories Together Now

The New Testament teems with the glory of God, and the glory of Christ, as the saints see what Edwards called “the great design” and “the great medium” play out before our eyes. The glory we see in Christ, the eternal Word made flesh, does not exclude the Father, but is “glory as of the only Son from the Father” (John 1:14). All God’s centuries of promises, says 2 Corinthians 1:20, find their “Yes” in Jesus — “that is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory.” The fruit of righteousness we bear in life “comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God” (Philippians 1:11). To the Father, through the Son.

We serve, says 1 Peter 4:11, “by the strength that God supplies — in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.” In our sufferings in the present time, we look to the God of all grace, who called us to “his eternal glory in Christ” (1 Peter 5:10). And in the great doxology of Hebrews, we look to the Father, “who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus” to work in us what is pleasing in his sight “through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen” (Hebrews 13:10–21).

Perhaps best of all is Philippians 2:9–11. God the Father has “highly exalted” his Son and given him, without envy or reservation, “the name that is above every name.” This is a stunning grant — one of the great realities the Father must have dreamed up when appointing his Son “heir of all things,” and is now delighted to fulfill. And lest we worry that the holy contest has gone too far when we learn that “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,” Paul has one last phrase to enchant us all in this happy family: “to the glory of God the Father.”

Glories at the End

Even now, as Christ sits enthroned in heaven, the Father is putting all things under his feet, and when that great work of redemption is done (Revelation 21:6), then “the Son himself will also be subjected to him” (1 Corinthians 15:27–28). Does the Father then, in the end, become the last recipient of glory, while the Son finally outdoes him in showing honor? Macleod encourages us “not to overlook the complexities of the situation” (88).

It is here, precisely with the end in view, that he observes how Father and Son seem to “vie with one another for the privilege of serving.” As we strain to look into the future, we find depths and dimensions to the divine glory we should be careful not to reduce. On the one hand, Jude 24–25 tells us the Father will present us before himself, while in Ephesians 5:27, Christ presents the church to himself in splendor. So too, not only will the Son present the kingdom to the Father (1 Corinthians 15), but the Father will present the bride to his Son (Revelation 21:2, 9). Macleod observes, “The idea of the Father handing over the bride to Christ is as definitive as that of the Son handing over the kingdom to the Father” (88).

Such twin emphases have for two millennia led the church to confess with Christ, and with awe, the blessed mystery, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30).

Glory Enough to Go Around

What a thrill it is to see that our Father, and our elder Brother, are not miserly with divine glory. There is no scarcity of glory in the Godhead to be hoarded and rationed. Divine persons do not compete for glory, even as they vie to show each other honor. As Dane Ortlund observes, “The New Testament oscillates so frequently between the Son and the Father as the more immediate object of glorification that it becomes unthinkable to envision one person of the Trinity being glorified and not the other persons.”

Our God does indeed, as God, righteously and lovingly seek his own glory, but we should not think of his glory as scarce, or his fingers as tight. He does not give his glory to another, even as “the Father of glory” (Ephesians 1:17) and Jesus “the Lord of glory” (1 Corinthians 2:8; James 2:1) — and so too “the Spirit of glory” (1 Peter 4:14) — vie with each other, outdoing one another in showing honor.

Such “competition” makes for the happiest family of all.

Audio Transcript

First Peter 1:5 holds a very special place in your life, Pastor John — a precious text about God’s keeping power over his children, of those “who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” So precious. This is the promise that you wanted as a banner over the life of your mom, and so had a phrase from this text (in the King James Version) etched into her grave: “Kept by the power of God.” Ruth Piper was kept by the power of God in this life until her tragic passing in an automobile accident at the age of 56. You were 28 at the time of the accident, almost fifty years ago now. It will be fifty years ago in just a couple of months actually — on December 16. You told us about the life-altering phone call you got, back in APJs 1577 and 1936. No need to go back into that story here.

I mention 1 Peter 1:5 because the text also adorns our Bible reading from yesterday, as we start this new week. Melissa, a podcast listener, wants to know more about what the verse means. “Hello, Pastor John,” she writes. “What does Peter mean that we are guarded ‘by God’s power . . . through faith’? How exactly does God guard us by his power but through faith? Is he guarding us through our own faith? I don’t understand how this works. Is his guarding of me thereby ultimately dependent on me and my faith? This is a text that should give me great comfort and it doesn’t. Not yet.”

Here’s the passage, 1 Peter 1:4–5 — let’s get it in front of us so that we know what we’re talking about. We have “an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” One of the wonderful things about this promise is that there is a double guarding or a double keeping.

First, God is keeping or guarding an inheritance in heaven for us. Verse 4: we have “an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept [or guarded] in heaven” by God for us. So, when we get there, the inheritance will be fabulous and not ruined or disappointing in any way. That’s the one keeping.

Here’s the other one. The other keeping is that God is guarding us for it. He not only keeps it — the inheritance — for us in heaven, but he keeps us for it. He guarantees that it will be there and that we will get there. That’s the double amazing thing in this verse — why it’s one of the favorites of many people, including me. “By God’s power [you] are being guarded [or kept] through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” In other words, you’re going to make it.

Who Sustains Our Faith?

Now, the key question for how we get strength from this — How do we actually apply it to our lives and draw down joy from this promise? — the key question is whether “kept by God through faith” means we sustain our own faith and then God responds by guarding or keeping us, or whether God sustains our faith and in that way he keeps us and guards us. In the first meaning, we are the decisive cause of our ongoing faith, and in the second meaning, God is the decisive cause of our ongoing faith. Which is it?

The answer to that question decides how we will answer this question: How can I be sure I will wake up a believer tomorrow morning? In one case, the answer would be, “God will see to it that I believe tomorrow morning. He will sustain my faith. He’s promised to sustain it, keep it, guard it. He’ll keep me believing.” In the other case, the answer would be, “I can only hope that my independent, self-determining will is not overcome tonight by my flesh or the devil or the world since the decisive, sustaining power must come from me.”

Five Reasons for Confidence

I see at least five reasons for thinking that Peter intended to strengthen and encourage us by teaching that God sustains our faith, and that’s how he guards us for final “salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.”

1. The other view doesn’t make sense.

I don’t think the other interpretation — that we are the decisive sustainers of our own faith — makes any sense in this verse. I think it’s got a built-in contradiction. Suppose you — we humans — provide the decisive cause of sustaining your faith day by day. That’s what you provide. My question is, What’s left for God to do to guard you for your heavenly inheritance, your final salvation? You might answer, “In response to my faith, he defeats the destructive effects of Satan and the destructive effects of suffering and the pleasures of this world. That’s what he does in response to my self-sustained faith.”

But think about it. There’s only one way that Satan and suffering and worldly pleasures can prevent you from attaining heaven — namely, by destroying your faith, which you’ve already accomplished. So, God does not need to provide that. You’ve provided that. Satan’s accusations don’t keep you out of heaven. The pain of suffering doesn’t keep you out of heaven. The allurements of the world don’t keep you out of heaven. The only way Satan, suffering, worldly pleasures can keep you out of heaven is by causing you to turn away from Christ and stop believing in him as your supreme treasure. And that’s what you yourself have already by sustaining your own faith.

If you say God prevents the satanic destruction of your faith after or as a result of your faith, which you yourself have triumphantly and decisively sustained, that’s a contradiction. God doesn’t guard you from doing what you’ve already done. That’s a contradiction. What you are really saying is that you yourself protected yourself from the faith-destroying effects of Satan, suffering, worldly pleasure. That is, you have guarded yourself for the inheritance through faith, and God is simply not needed to get you there by guarding or sustaining your faith.

“God not only keeps our inheritance for us in heaven, but he also keeps us for it.”

So, I conclude that being guarded through faith by God’s power means God’s power sustains our faith, and that’s why Satan and suffering and pleasure do not succeed in destroying our faith. God’s power sustains our faith. He keeps us for the final salvation by keeping our faith. That’s argument number one. The other view doesn’t make sense. It has a built-in contradiction.

2. We believe ‘through him.’

In this same chapter, 1 Peter 1:20–21 says, “[Christ] was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you who through him are believers in God.” Now, I think “through him [you] are believers in God” means he is the cause and the sustaining power of your faith.

3. Faith comes by new birth.

Verse 3 says, “According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope” (1 Peter 1:3). Now, we know that “faith is the assurance of things hoped for” (Hebrews 11:1). Faith is inseparable from hope. Hope is faith in the future tense, you might say. So, the way we became Christians was owing to no merit in ourselves. We didn’t do anything. We were dead. We had to be born again. God in “his great mercy . . . caused us to be born again.” That has caused us to have spiritual life, and that life manifests itself in hope and faith. That’s the way it remains all our lives, I’m arguing. Our faith was brought into being by mercy — undeserved mercy, totally lopsided, Godward mercy — and it is sustained by mercy.

4. God promises to keep us.

This interpretation fits with the promise of the new covenant in which Christians now live. This is who we are. We are blood-bought new-covenant people. And here’s how Jeremiah describes the new covenant, which is the experience of believers today. In Jeremiah 32:40, the Lord says, “I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me.” That’s the promise of God-sustained faith. That’s the heart of the new covenant — the heart of it. God puts his fear — puts faith — in us, so that we don’t make shipwreck of our faith. That’s the promise and difference between the new and old covenant.

5. Jesus intercedes for us.

Finally, in Luke 22:31 there is a beautiful picture of how this faith-sustaining work of God happens — it happened then and happens now because of Christ’s intercession for us in heaven. Jesus says to Peter the night before his crucifixion, “Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat.” What does that mean? It means he’s going to squish you through the strainer and sift out all your faith. He’ll leave you there, and your faith will be stuck in the wires. That’s what he’s trying to do tonight. “But I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail” (Luke 22:32).

In other words, I have asked your Father in heaven to sustain your faith. That’s what I do. “And when you have turned again” — not if you have turned again — when you have turned again. He knows it’s going to happen. He asks God for it. When you’ve repented, then “strengthen your brothers.” So, that’s a picture of how Christ intercedes for us today. He’s interceding for us, and that’s what he’s doing — he’s asking our Father to sustain our faith just like he did for Peter.

So, for those five reasons at least — there are more — I think we can rejoice. Indeed, I think we should leap for joy that not only is God keeping a treasure for us in heaven secure; he is also keeping us secure for heaven. “By [his] power . . . through faith” — this is through sustaining our faith.

Recently, my wife and I became fascinated with documentaries about mountain climbers. It started with Free Solo, which tells the story of Alex Honnold and his ascent of one of the most difficult rock faces in Yosemite National Park — without any ropes! We watched awestruck at what Honnold accomplished and, at the same time, appalled by the risks he took. What would drive a man to that?

Next, The Alpinist landed in our playlist. The film kept us on the edge of our seats as it followed Marc-André Leclerc’s obsession with solo climbing America’s most dangerous peaks. Leclerc’s longing to experience the highest heights eventually led to his tragic death.

Other tales of alpinism followed, and after watching scores of people ante up their lives to summit the loftiest peaks on the planet, my wife asked the obvious question: Where does that desire come from? Why do mountains so mesmerize us?

Curious Cravings

Now, you may not feel the allure of the alpine aesthetic as keenly as Honnold or Leclerc — or me. You may not ache to ascend the roof of the world or thirst for a glimpse of mountain majesty. But the practice of discerning desires — the ability to interrogate where your desires come from and where they lead to — sits right at the heart of wisdom (Proverbs 20:5).

As the Puritans were fond of pointing out, desires reveal the shape of the soul. Often man’s deepest longings — though they may attach to the wrong objects — unveil what God made us for. To paraphrase Chesterton, Every man who walks into a brothel is unconsciously looking for God. Can the same be said for everyone who walks up mountains? What does this desire reveal about your soul and mine?

Where Heaven Touches Earth

In the early 2000s, the United Nations declared 2009 “International Year of Mountains” and dedicated it with the slogan, “We are all mountain people.” Whatever the UN meant, that phrase summarizes well the role mountains play in Scripture. From start to finish, the story of the Bible swirls around mountaintops, and the people of God truly are mountain people. Let me explain.

In the beginning, God created everything, including mountains (Psalm 90:2; 95:4; 104:8). God made man, gave him dominion, and placed him in the garden of Eden on God’s holy mountain (Ezekiel 28:14). This Edenic peak is paradigmatic of all other noteworthy mountains in Scripture because here God dwelt with man. On the mountain, heaven touches earth. However, man’s stay on these blessed heights was short-lived. He chose death, and down he went from paradise.

Throughout the rest of God’s story, mountains grant a foretaste of when heaven and earth will be renewed — God and man together again. Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Elijah all met God on the mountain. The temple and tabernacle, both modeled after Eden, had their own mini-mountains in the form of the altar. And Zion towered over all other rival heights as “the mount that God desired for his abode” (Psalm 68:15–16).

Jesus regularly sought God on the mountain (Matthew 14:23; Mark 6:46). But more than that, Jesus was God on the mountain. He met man there in thunder and cloud (Mark 9:2–8), reuniting heaven and earth. All the alpine cords of Scripture climax in Christ. He calls his own to join him on the mountain (Mark 3:13), and from the mountaintop he commissions his new humanity to mediate his dominion to the ends of the earth (Matthew 28:16–20). And one day, those kingdom subjects will climb further up and further in to dwell with God on the Mountain forever (Revelation 21:10).

In Scripture, mountains stand as metaphors in stone. They are the place where heaven meets earth, where God descends to man. They are monolithic reminders of the enormous bliss of Eden.

Anatomy of the Ache

Given the prominence of peaks in Scripture, we should not be surprised that the human soul longs to climb. But can we say more about this desire? What is the anatomy of the alpine ache? In the allure of the mountains, we can identify at least five longings God placed in the human soul.

1. We long to exercise dominion.

In 1923, shortly after geographers identified Everest as the tallest mountain on earth, a reporter asked explorer George Mallory why he was hell-bent on summitting the peak. He famously replied, “Because it’s there.” Mallory died the following year attempting to be the first man to put Everest under his feet. Here we find the ancient drive to take dominion.

On the original mountaintop, God commanded man to subdue the earth (Genesis 1:28). The word subdue means to subjugate, to conquer, to take mastery over. I cannot help but imagine God issuing this commission with a smile. It was almost a dare. Knowing the very-goodness of the world he made, knowing the soaring heights and unsounded depths, knowing the waves and winds, knowing the wonders of water and the charms of snow, surely God delighted to invite man to explore this cosmic playground!

He sealed this desire for dominion in his image bearers, especially in the hearts of men. The urge to set foot on the highest heights in the most dangerous ways and direst conditions testifies to this hunger.

2. We long to see beauty.

Several years ago, my wife and I bought a van, converted it to a camper, and toured the South Island of New Zealand. I was a kid on a country-sized playground. I climbed every hill, cliff, crest, and mountain we could drive to. On those heights, I encountered beauty that could pierce like an arrow, seize like a vice, and brand like hot iron — majesty that kindled delight and awakened desire. I will never forget some of those moments, but not because of the marvels in front of me. Those experiences are etched in my mind because I know in my bones that I played on the border of what I was made for — to see Beauty.

“In Scripture, mountains stand as metaphors in stone. They are the place where heaven meets earth, where God descends to man.”

The psalmist knew this stab of longing well. Beauty pierced him through, and the ache would never leave. It dominated him. Like Captain Ahab, he had one all-consuming pursuit: to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord (Psalm 27:4). We were made to “behold the king in his beauty” (Isaiah 33:17). Our souls will be satisfied with nothing less than basking in “the perfection of beauty” shining in the face of Jesus Christ (Psalm 50:2).

The perilous majesty of mountains whets this appetite — by God’s design. All the wonders of lesser mountains remind us of the mountain of God. “His holy mountain, beautiful in elevation, is the joy of all the earth, Mount Zion, in the far north” (Psalm 48:1–2).

3. We long to participate in glory.

Still, don’t we want more, so much more than simply to see beauty? We want to be swallowed up in the beauty. We don’t just want to behold; we want to become. To touch is not enough; oh, we want to be transformed! We want to join the great dance. We want in.

To put it another way, we want glory; we seek it (Romans 2:7). We yearn to participate in the glory we were made for — the glory we even now restlessly reflect (Romans 8:29–30). Which of us would not trade all to hear on the lips of our Lord, “Well done! Enter into the joy of your Master”? This divine approval meets our deep desire for glory. As C.S. Lewis explains, “Glory means good report with God, acceptance by God, response, acknowledgment, and welcome into the heart of things. The door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last” (The Weight of Glory, 41).

That knocking reverberates from mountain walls and echoes from the highest peaks. One caption translates all the countless selfies taken on the world’s summits: “Is this not enough? Let me in!” When asked why he takes such climbing risks, Honnold replied, “If you succeed, everybody celebrates you as a big hero.” Honnold, like all made in the image of God, wants glory, but he is knocking at the wrong door.

4. We long to savor fear.

Have you ever wondered why so many people enjoy scary movies? Or why the very risk that makes extreme sports hazardous also makes them wildly attractive? Or why “danger tourism” draws so many? In part, the answer lies in our longing to savor fear.

There is something uniquely thrilling about fear. Yes, the pleasure is a sharp one. It boasts a razor edge, but it remains, nonetheless, a genuine pleasure. Thus, Nehemiah admits that the servants of God delight to fear him (Nehemiah 1:11). They worship in fear and rejoice in trembling (Psalm 2:11). They fall before God in awestruck adoration. We were made to fear.

Therefore, we seek out what Rudulf Otto calls numinous experiences. Encounters that make us feel small. Occasions that make us aware that we are mere creatures in the presence of a Creator wholly other. The alpine aesthetic preeminently grants this experience. Describing the magnetism of the mountains, Leclerc explained, “One of the coolest feelings a human can experience is to feel so small in a world that’s so big.” The wonder of mountains scratches this itch. It both feeds and fuels our desire to fear.

5. We long to dwell with God.

Here we come to the principle of our longing. The Bible shapes our imaginations to see the mountain as a place where the divine touches the dust. At the top, the physical world waxes translucent, and the presence of God peeks through. The winds that blow from the high country thrum with the hope that one day we will leave the shadowlands behind and ascend to the homeland we long for. The promise of the sunrise will burst upon us in the light of the Lamb.

Mountains awaken this sweet desire. We want to dwell with God. The booming invitation of Aslan to “Come further up! Come further in!” leaves us breathless. Shakes us to the soul. We ache to ascend to Eden — but better.

Massive granite arrows, mountains point beyond themselves to Someone far higher and more thrilling — to the One where all the beauty comes from. If we mistake them for the God they beckon us to know, they become stone idols, dragging their worshipers down. But if we heed their call to climb, we may admit with Lewis, “All my life the God of the Mountain has been wooing me” (Till We Have Faces, 87).