Mountain Mentality

     Dawn on our last morning in the mountains.  If serenity could be visually depicted, this would be it! Thank You Lord.  There is nothing more beautiful than early morning sunrises (followed closely by evening sunsets).  We are headed back down the mountain in just a little while, and, whew, much must be accomplished before we all cram back into the car.  Sheets, towels, beds, laundry, cleaning, searching for missing items, straightening, and on and on.
      But, Lord, help us to maintain a mountain mentality even as we descend back into the valley and "real life."  Perhaps this is all just a tiny taste of what You envision as our real life--time to savor, to share, to sit back and appreciate, to rejoice, to thank.  Maybe our "real life" of frenzy and worry and haste and striving is really just a shadow of what the abundant life could and should be.  Real life should be joy and peace and love and hope and thanksgiving and contentment all the while actively working and doing everything He's called us to do.  After all, He gave the very first man and woman work in the garden from the very beginning and that work was good and satisfying--well, that is until the fall.  The work isn't the problem--it's the worry and hurry, the frenzy and fretting that gets us.
     One day in heaven, don't you think we'll finally realize what "real life"--abundant life--truly is--and what God meant for it to be all along, even on this sin-scarred but Savior-redeemed planet?  I wonder if it will be like coming home and saying, "Ahh, this was it all along!  How could we have missed it?  Look how much He had for us, but we were too busy or worried or preoccupied to see it.  Such wonder, such glory, such joy, such peace, such beauty--fully realized and appropriated for all of eternity in heaven, but little foretastes, little foreshadowings of it on earth."
     Surely each of us can maintain a mountain mentality (or beach mentality or whatever it is that enables you to slow and see and savor and feel fully satisfied in Him and in His plans for you).  He has given us His Holy Spirit to guide us into all Truth and to encourage us, to teach us, to help us.  And He is always, at every single moment of every single day, only a breath away: just one whispered prayer, one silent prayer to the God of the universe.  Imagine that--our every prayer connecting us to all that power, all that peace, all that enabling and strengthening to meet our every need.
     So Father, as we go back into the valleys of our lives, help us to constantly practice Your presence and call on Your supernatural power.   Give us, we humbly ask, Your joy, Your peace, Your love, Your strength,  Your grace, Your compassion, Your forgiveness as we live this day and every day.   Give us a mountain mentality that sees and trusts You in the midst of our valleys, our challenges, our crises, our circumstances--good, bad, or indifferent.  And remind us to give "Thanks."
    To the Lord of the sunrise and the sunset, the mountain and the valley, to our great and glorious and good God, be all the glory.