Learning to sing a song of ascent <3

One of the incredible gifts of life experiences is the way they add depth to the truths of God. On Sunday morning we sang a song that is familiar to me now because it is currently a favorite on the radio and on the rotation of praise and worship songs on Sunday mornings. 

If you attend church regularly or listen to any Christian music stations at home or in the car, you probably know it as well. The song is “Battle Belongs”and was written by Brian Johnson and Phil Wickham.

The lyrics are about how our perspective of the battles, trials and challenges of this life differ from God’s viewpoint. And so the lyrics work through the various comparisons of this dichotomy, they land on our human position to best be one of kneeling in prayer and praise. 

But the line that grabbed me Sunday morning was this one:

When all I see is the mountain, You see a mountain moved.

Brian Johnson and Phil Wickham

As we sang, my mind went to our summer visit to Maine and Acadia National Park. Twice, Russ and I found entrances to trail heads and in complete naïveté, began to forge along barely marked trails with not a clue what we were in for. As we traversed rocky paths and often had to crawl to navigate the climb, we would ask those coming down how much farther. 

They would shake their heads and say quite a ways, but it was worth it. They were right on both counts. All we could see were the rocky rough path stones as we pressed on. Thankfully God didn’t move the mountain both times we did this. Instead He enabled us to keep going and when we got to the summit, the wide open sky and view of the circumference of the world around us took our breath away. 

Russ and I laughed like little kids thinking we could have turned back and missed all of it. We stood in front of altitude markers to prove we had done it. We felt so small as we looked out over the bay and ocean and smaller mountains all around us. We marveled that two rookie climbers had done it. We had reached the top. 

And we learned a new song of ascent. We have a tangible life moment to pin to the idea that when we are facing mountains, we know the one who can made them and can move them or can strengthen us to reach the top of them and then climb back down. 

Yes, some mountains need to be moved and it is our God who can move them. But some are worth the climb. I am so deeply thankful He has been faithful in both for us <3