How to Make it Up the (2025) Mountain

A few years ago, just after New Year’s, I drove up a snowy mountain pass that felt too steep for my van. My tires were half-bald. There weren’t enough guard rails. It would be dark soon. But I had to go.

This is like us, yes? We’re all sitting at the base of a mountain, the new year looming like a distant frigid peak with few roads and many glaciers and threats along the way. But we have to go. And we know what is asked of us along the way:

Be faithful!

(But what if it starts snowing and we can’t see the road and we get lost?)

Be joyful!

(But what if we’re terrified or angry or anxious?)

Be fruitful!

(But we barely have strength to drive, let alone help others.)

Be loving!

(But the others on the road are terrible, unsafe drivers.)

Be perfect!

(But we’re made of dust and shattered glass.)

Be like Jesus!

(But on this icy road, we don’t even know how to be ourselves . . ..)

But, maybe . . .

we make too much of our smallness.

Maybe, we love too much our weakness.

When our failures loom too large then Christ shrinks small.

When we’re stuck in our anxiety we lose sight of His glory.

When we obsess over our brokenness we lose delight in his beauty.

All of this makes the mountain higher and steeper than it is.

And it ignores the truth of who you are.

Do you remember who you are? Do you remember that the mystery hidden for ages and generations has been revealed NOW, to His saints?! To YOU?!

 And this mystery is . .. ..  “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

I’m writing this today for you——and for me. Honestly, there are life-and-death roads I have to travel this year and everything in me recoils and protests. But——I believe this:

We don’t drive that mountain pass alone.  (Christ in you, the hope of glory!) 

Our hands are not the only hands on the wheel (Christ in you, the hope of glory!)

If we get stuck, we won’t be stuck for long. (Christ in you, the hope of glory!) 

Did I tell you why I drove up that mountain that day? There were sleds in the back of my car. There were boys in the seats behind me. This was a survival drive out of the chaos and claustrophobia of the winter house.

And——we made it up the mountain. Do you know what we found there? It was another world. In the too-long dark of the winter, up there was light and almost sun, and pieces of blue shone from the sky on the new snow. A ptarmigan startled from a bush. People were snowboarding. My sons’ laughter slid down the sledding hill behind them all the way to the bottom. We walked for hours in a snow-bath wilderness.  Later, the setting sun set the peaks on yellow fire.  

I don’t know what’s ahead for us all in this next year. But believe with me that it will be a grand, heart-pumping adventure. We’ll get stronger on the strain up the slopes. We will laugh on the way down, as my sons and I did zooming around the curves. Our eyes will be wide open. We’ll catch our breath on the straightaways and then fly on the downhills …  We’ll make it all the way up and then down because---you know it---Christ is in us, the hope of glory.

The New Year starts now.

(Yes, seat belts required!)