When did you first become acquainted with your finitude?

To some, that may seem like a funny question. When was I not acquainted with finitude? For as long as you remember, you’ve been confronted with the limits you face in the mirror. Sometimes, it may even feel like the mirror has come to life and follows you, carrying your flaws and failures wherever you go. There’s a friend who sticks closer than a brother, and finitude draws closer still.

Where shall I go from my limits?     Or where shall I flee from my weakness?If I work diligently into the night, you are there!     If I wake early before the others, you are there!If I give all I have, and do all I can, and make every possible effort,     even there you find me.

Finitude, of course, touches a dozen different nerves. You may get tired more quickly than others, and end most days worrying about what didn’t get done. You may have a hard time falling asleep, or staying asleep. Or if there’s an opportunity to get sick, your body seems to seize it. Maybe you’ve battled chronic illness or persistent pain over years or decades. Or you’re called to some difficult relationship that always seems to demand more than you can give. It’s part of the mystery and brilliance of humanity — these creatures that can harness electricity, transplant a heart, and visit the moon, and yet still need naps and sick days.

Whatever limits you, you can probably walk outside and see something of yourself in those tiny green blades beneath your feet:

As for man, his days are like grass;     he flourishes like a flower of the field;for the wind passes over it, and it is gone,     and its place knows it no more. (Psalm 103:15–16)

If you follow this grassy trail through Scripture, you realize that our finitude isn’t the accident it often seems to be (or at least feels like in the moment). If you can believe it, it’s actually a feature.

“Humans are finite to maximize, not minimize, what humans are made to be and do.”

Notice, even before the fall (before our need for redemption), God made us unavoidably limited. And now after the fall, he uses our finitude to draw us back to him. From the beginning, humans are finite to maximize, not minimize, what humans are made to be and do. To be fully human requires feeling and embracing the limits of being human. Even glorified humans living with God in the new heavens and new earth will still be finite — free from sin and pain and sorrow, but not without the limits of a body.

We know our finiteness is intentional and purposeful, because God brings it up again and again in the Bible. As he does, he often reaches for grass (which, remember, he himself sovereignly sketched and planted).

All flesh is grass,     and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.The grass withers, the flower fades     when the breath of the Lord blows on it;     surely the people are grass. (Isaiah 40:6–7)

As I write, our yard’s been without rain for several weeks. Despite some real (modest) effort, I’m watching the withering in real time the brief and fragile life of my poor lawn. And I’m learning about myself. All flesh is grass, even mine, and my short spring and summer will soon fall into winter.

But grass isn’t the only window we have into finitude. Even in Psalm 103, God gives us another metaphor for our limitations: “He knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust” (Psalm 103:14). Man was formed from dust, and we must all return to dust, and in between, we are small, brief, and brittle, like dust. Dust from dust to dust.

By the sweat of your face     you shall eat bread,till you return to the ground,     for out of it you were taken;for you are dust,     and to dust you shall return. (Genesis 3:19; see Ecclesiastes 3:20)

Like grass, like dust, like a single drip of water: “Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are accounted as the dust on the scales” (Isaiah 40:15). We were meant to feel this way, like a 5-foot 9-inch blade of grass, like a 195-pound shadow. If you feel the discomfort of finitude, you’re not alone and you’re not crazy. You’re human.

Prayers of Finitude

The more I walk through the field of Psalm 103 in particular — “As for man, his days are like grass” — the more I realize that finitude weaves its way through the whole psalm. These have been some of my favorite verses to pray in all the Bible:

Bless the Lord, O my soul,     and all that is within me,     bless his holy name!Bless the Lord, O my soul,     and forget not all his benefits,who forgives all your iniquity,     who heals all your diseases,who redeems your life from the pit,     who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,who satisfies you with good     so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s. (Psalm 103:1–5)

I’ve long loved these verses for rehearsing the height and width and depth of God’s power and love, but I’ve recently learned to appreciate them even more for being prayers of vulnerability and finitude. These are the prayers of people acquainted with sickness (“who heals all your diseases”), of people in desperate situations (“who redeems your life from the pit”), of people wrestling with weakness (who renews your youth), of people weighed down by sin (“who forgives all your iniquity”), and in the next verse, of people who’ve been wronged and wounded (who “works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed”).

“Finitude exists to lead us to Infinitude.”

In just a handful of lines, we can each find someone who relates to our finitude. We can find a cry for whatever fragile moments we experience. We also find a God ready to meet and bless us in our particular limits and weaknesses.

Where Finitude Takes Us

If we let it, finitude really will help us live happier, more fully human lives, but only if we see through the grass, the dust, the shadow, the drip. Follow Psalm 103 through the field: “As for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more. But . . .” Now we’ll learn where the good path of finitude finally leads. All of our weakness, sickness, frustration, disappointment has been leading us to and through this sentence:

But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him,     and his righteousness to children’s children,to those who keep his covenant     and remember to do his commandments.The Lord has established his throne in the heavens,     and his kingdom rules over all. (Psalm 103:17–19)

Finitude exists to lead us to Infinitude. God never grows weak or tired. He never needs help. He never sins. He never feels stuck or desperate. He never needs to sleep in or take a nap. Unlike us, he’s not like grass. If all the nations are a drop in the bucket, his kingdom is an ocean.

So, as we come up against our limits again and again, when we feel our dust-ness more acutely again today, or tomorrow, or sometime next year, we’re meant to see and feel his limitlessness. There’s no ceiling to his ability, no reins on his power, no vulnerability in his plan, no exhausting his mercy. The grassiness of our short, complicated, confusing, often discouraging lives should lead us to his iron throne of love. Every limit and weakness that sets us apart from God can help us savor more of him.

He Knows Our Frame

Being himself infinite, you might think God would have a hard time relating to finite creatures like us, but he doesn’t. In his infinitude, he finds the heart to father the weak and flawed, to love us as if we were his own children. He loves us more than an earthly father could (Luke 11:13).

As a father shows compassion to his children,     so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.For he knows our frame;     he remembers that we are dust. (Psalm 103:13–14)

We know our frame, and we grumble and despair. God knows our frame (even more than we know ourselves), and yet instead of complaining about us or rejecting us, he draws close to strengthen and help us. In Christ, his power is made perfect in our weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9). He approaches our frailty with the heart of a devoted father, not of a ruthless manager. If we fear and follow him, the limits we’re tempted to despise about ourselves stir and inflame the coals of his compassion.

And he not only knows our frame, but sent his Son to bear our frame. Our God is the only God ever conceived who can sympathize with finitude. Jesus lived a short, physically demanding, relationally trying, temptation-battling life. He slept and got sick. He even died. And then he rose to give your grass-like life a throne-like weight and glory.

So, if you feel a little like grass, let those sharp green blades point you up and away from your frustrations and insecurities to the God who knows your finitude, planned your finitude, lived your finitude, and now redeems your finitude.

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).

Some milestones in our children’s lives stick with us. I cannot forget teaching our children to read — a pleasure that continues as I help our youngest son.

I remember the weight of my charge to help my young children’s developing minds grasp written language! This skill enables them to read God’s word for themselves. What could be more motivating for me as their mom and teacher? Yet the process of training them to read started long before they turned four or five or six or seven. It started when they were babies being read board books by Mom and Dad.

Cultivate the Right Tastes Together

Reading doesn’t begin as an activity your child does by himself. It begins with fathers and mothers. It begins with us reading aloud. We increase our kid’s appetite by narrating books that they enjoy and understand. These books are not the books you would choose to read in your alone time, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy them together.

This is a benefit of being a mom — getting to find joy and delight in the things that our children find joy and delight in. We get to reexperience every stage of childhood, which means we get to reexperience every stage of reading. Are there moments when this is more duty than delight? Of course! But not often if you’ve taken care to put off that sinful sort of adulthood that can’t enjoy the childlikeness that marks the very kingdom of God.

I have memorized many books over the years (even longer ones!) simply because my young children wanted to hear the book over and over, day after day, night after night. This sort of repetition is good for them and us. We often benefit more from knowing one good book inside and out than we would from barely knowing ten books, so welcome your child’s love of repetition.

Discipling Readers

From the earliest books you read to your children, remember that you’re cultivating tastes — tastes for rhyme, rhythm, and cadence; tastes for artwork, color, and illustrations; tastes for themes, plots, and morals.

Books are not inherently virtuous. Books can have good content and bad content. The cadence can be off, the themes can be foolish, the illustrations can be gaudy. As mom, you get to help weed out the bad and offer up the good. It won’t do to send young sons or daughters to peruse the aisles of the children’s section at the public library or bookstore without your steady hand to guide them.

“From the earliest books you read to your children, remember that you’re cultivating tastes.”

Books can teach and catechize all sorts of ungodly ideologies, but thankfully, that’s why children have a mom — so that she can help to discern between books that are junk food, books that are snack food, books that are poison, and books that are healthy. And, as a Christian, it’s perfectly acceptable to avoid the public library altogether if you find it unhelpful. That was my approach. Instead, we started our own home library — a decision I’ve never regretted.

The Good, the True, the Beautiful

One of our favorite family pastimes has been to listen to books together while in the car — either a lengthy book series over a long trip, or shorter books on the way to weekly activities. We made the decision early on to avoid screens for our kids in the car, but instead to listen to books and music, and talk to each other.

Once we were driving a fifteen-hour trek from Montana home to Minnesota in one day, and we had been listening to The Chronicles of Narnia. It was our first time listening to the whole series as a family, and our five children ranged from infant to grade school. We finally arrived home late at night, but we still had about fifteen minutes left of The Last Battle. So, at the older kids’ request, we parked the car in the garage and sat for fifteen more minutes going further up and further into True Narnia, as tears streamed down my face at the wonder of it all.

But why do we encourage our kids to read? I’ve noticed that there is a sort of strange pride we moms can have about our children being “readers,” as though a child with his head in a book must be a good kid, or at the very least, a smart one. But we moms need to know better. Reading is a means, not an end. And it ought to be a means to Christian virtue — to the good, the true, and the beautiful — and to help sharpen or challenge thinking, to inspire courage, and glean insight. If reading is desirable merely because it’s better than the TV or iPad, then we should probably raise the bar.

“God knows how to write the best stories. We want our children to read of him, trust him, and enjoy him forever.”

Just as we must be discerning readers and help our children develop into discerning readers, we also must be discerning moms — seeing clearly whether our children’s reading habit is cultivating virtue or suppressing it. As our children have grown to love reading, I have frequently confiscated (good!) books, and reminded them they have stories of their own to be living. Get outside, solve a problem, talk to people, do your chores, tell some jokes, make music. Do I want them to be “readers”? Yes, inasmuch as reading cultivates virtue, not a malformed introversion.

Expect the Eucatastrophe

When our oldest daughter, Eliza, was ten, she was finishing up a book in the back seat of our minivan. Seth, her younger brother, was reading the last chapter along with her, not having read the rest of the book. He commented to her, “It looks like it’s going to be a happy ending.” She responded, “Oh, I don’t like happy endings. That means the book is over.” Then she gave this insight, “But when things are scary or sad at the end, you know there will be another chapter or book coming.”

Haven’t you known the sinking feeling of ending a book that you love? J.R.R. Tolkien said that the best kind of stories (which he calls fairy-tales) don’t have an ending. But what they do have is the eucatastrophe, which Tolkien describes in one of his letters:

I coined the word eucatastrophe: the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears (which I argued it is the highest function of fairy-stories to produce). And I was there led to the view that it produces its peculiar effect because it is a sudden glimpse of Truth, your whole nature chained in material cause and effect, the chain of death, feels a sudden relief as if a major limb out of joint had suddenly snapped back. It perceives . . . that this is indeed how things really do work in the Great World for which our nature is made. And I concluded by saying that the Resurrection was the greatest eucatastrophe possible. (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, 100)

Perhaps the greatest virtue we aim to instill in our children through reading is to recognize the eucatastrophe, and learn to expect it — which is integral to the Christian faith and story. This reality is why we would have them daily become acquainted with the stories and rhythms and plots and cadence and themes of the Scriptures through reading.

The Best of Stories

The great Eucatastrophe has happened — God the Son was crucified and buried, then raised to life on the third day. But there are more eucatastrophes to come for those who are in Christ.

That is why the chief book we encourage our kids to read is Scripture. The God who brought his people through the Red Sea as they were pressed by Pharoah’s army, and who toppled the walls of Jericho with trumpets and shouts, and who used a young shepherd to take down Goliath, and who kept Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego unsinged in the hottest fire, and who rescued his people with a beautiful young woman turned Queen Esther — he knows how to rescue the godly when all seems lost. He knows how to write the best stories. We want our children to read of him, trust him, and enjoy him forever.