sinai

Listen, I’ve never seen anything like a sunrise on Mount Sinai. I woke up from under a rather smelly camel blanket to the pinks and yellows that were creeping up, silhouetting the mountain peaks in the distance and telling everyone to grab for their cameras. We had hiked up to the top in the middle of the night by the light of a million stars and a couple flashlights and spent a few hours waiting to catch the first light. The sun finally came up as a fiery red ball and started to show us what we were standing smack in the middle of. I’ve heard it called wilderness, and I can’t think of a better term. Everywhere I looked, as far as I could see was nothing but enormous mountains and jagged rocks. And it was all brown. It was awesome.

I opened to Exodus and began to read about the place where I was sitting. The Israelites had been wandering around in a completely desolate place and finally came to this mountain. God decided that the time had come for them to make a choice… either they were going to trust him and follow or not. Then something crazy happened. God took his glory and put it into this thick black cloud and enveloped the entire mountain in it. Thunder and lightning started going off everywhere and the mountain started violently shaking…like, the mountain was really shaking. ok, this mountain is freakin solid…I can’t imagine anything shaking it. God showed up there and the mountain shook. The people were scared to death and scattered as far and as fast as they could go, and I can’t say I blame them. The glory of God should be beautifully and powerfully terrifying. But here’s one of my favorite parts… while all the people were running away, Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was.

I sat up there taking cool pictures, soaking in the spectacular view, and trying to wrap my mind around the thought that I was in a place where God’s glory had been physically present and had met with man. Thoughts like that don’t tend to inspire much assertiveness, but I began to ask God some bold things. I asked him to floor me with that same glory and remind me what it is to fear him—to tremble before his power and for once be silent and undone before the Creator. Slowly, I began to ask for courage like Moses to draw near in pursuit of the mystery of his glory. Mount Sinai was awesome.




Oh… but I did drop my camera off a cliff. I climbed down a little and got it back. It’s just sort of broken.

I’ll fix it, ma’fiish mushkilla.