Covenant Communications is doing a wonderful thing just now--inviting Covenant photographers to submit photos that relate to each of the four weeks of Advent and the texts for those Sundays. Today's is from Isaiah 2:1-5, prophesying that "in days to come the mountain of the Lord's house will be established as the highest of the mountains and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it."
I've seen a lot of mountains lately on the tour my son Peter and I took together to Egypt, Jordan, and Israel. Biblical mountains were everywhere--living witnesses to earthbounds like us of things that once were and are yet to be.
Andrew Larsen's submission this week (above) illuminates for me the place of such mountains--in no way worthy of worship as things in themselves, massive and great as they are. We lift our eyes to them in vain unless we remember with the psalmist that our help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth (121:1). In this case the swirling stars above lift one's sights to realms where God himself dwells who waits to "teach us his ways ... that we may walk in his paths" (Isaiah 2:3b).
If Advent does no more for us than help us prepare for our little Christmas celebrations its true purpose will surely escape us. No matter earth's greatness, it will never in itself suffice to satisfy our deepest needs. Only when we lift our eyes beyond ourselves--to mountains, stars, and the galaxies both seen and unseen beyond can we grasp the hope that the God beyond them, our Creator and Redeemer, intends for us all.
Saved by grace we must also be sustained by that hope. God will indeed "judge between the nations ... beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks." That is Advent's true vision and it calls each of us, less we miss it, to live and walk not by sight but by faith "in the light of the Lord."
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