June 25, Morning

C. H. Spurgeon · Modern retelling

"Get thee up into the high mountain." — Isaiah 40:9 · KJV

Our knowledge of Christ is something like climbing a mountain. At the base you see very little; the mountain itself looks only half as high as it really is. Shut into a narrow valley, you notice hardly anything but the streams rippling down to the brook at its foot. Climb the first low ridge, and the valley lengthens and widens beneath your feet. Go higher, and you can see the countryside for miles around, and the widening view delights you. Keep climbing, and the scene grows larger still, until at last you stand on the summit and look east, west, north, and south over what seems half a kingdom. There, in some distant county, lies a forest; here is the sea; over there a shining river, the smoking chimneys of a factory town, the masts of ships crowded in a busy port. It all pleases you, and you say, "I never imagined so much could be seen from this height." The Christian life follows the same pattern. When we first believe in Christ, we see very little of Him. The higher we climb, the more of His beauty we discover. But who has ever reached the summit? Who has measured the heights and depths of the love of Christ, which passes knowledge? Paul, grown old, gray-haired, and shivering in a Roman prison, could say with far more weight than we can, "I know whom I have believed." Every experience had been the climbing of another hill, every trial the ascent of another peak, and his death itself seemed like gaining the mountaintop, where at last he could survey the whole faithfulness and love of Him to whom he had entrusted his soul. So get up, dear friend, into the high mountain.