Up The Mountain

I paused on my climb up the mountain
And gazed at the valley below,
At the plains and the grasses and meadows
And the lakes and the rivers that flowed.

So pleasant and calm, it was calling
To return to the safe and secure,
To descend once again to the valley;
I nearly succumbed to its lure.

But I turned and gazed back up the mountain,
Through the mists that surrounded it there,
And I knew that I had to go higher
And breath of its rarefied air.

Something was calling me higher
To places that I could not see,
Calling me onward and upward
To somewhere I knew I must be.

So I turned with a resolute spirit
And set out for the summit again;
My destiny calling me upward,
I could not go back where I'd been.

The briars and brambles tore at me
And tortured my frail human flesh,
But I persevered to go onward;
To stay where I was would be death.

The fog and the rain whipped around me,
The chill wind reached into my bones;
But I persevered and went onward,
Battered and tattered and blown.

The pathway was steep, rough and rocky,
My feet fain could not take a hold;
With my arms I reached out for a handhold
And climbed on through the clouds and the cold.

'Til at last I climbed onto the summit
Where the sun shone in dazzling array.
The clouds were no more and I basked there
In the light of a new, perfect day.

Oh, say, are we not climbing upward,
To the mount of the house of the Lord?
Stay not but press onward and upward
And soon we shall see our reward.

'Tis the face of the One we've been seeking,
Of Jesus, the One we adore;
We'll find that it all has been worth it
As we live in His love evermore.

We are climbing to a place we've never seen, and we long to look on One who is invisible. Yet there is something that calls us continually on, and we could no more stay where we are than we could deny Him outright. We will find that the pain and the pressure were a small price to pay for the glory that shall be revealed.