Hill and Valley God

Why do we see hills and want to climb them? What makes my friend Tim risk his limbs to dangle off a mountain? We understand at a deep level that height represents achievement and power. We want to climb up the ladder at work not slip down the pecking order. We want to be top of the pile not bottom of the heap.

So it is no surprise that our God is described as Most High over all the earth. He is exalted forever, far above all gods, over all the nations, over every principality and power.

Too often, I live eyes down. I lose sight of the God of the hills, who is high over every high place, over the clamour of parliaments, the trends and twists of culture, over every success and every ambition.

Our God is exalted, high above it all.

Yet not so high to be unreachable. He is not only God of the hills, he is God of the valleys too.

Today, I read about King Ben-Hadad of Aram who made a drastic mistake. He thought that the God of Israel only ruled on the hills so he decided to fight God’s people in the valleys (1 Kings 20). The troops of Israel are described as gatherng like two little flocks of goats against the hundreds of thousands in Aram’s army. What hope was there for them?

The God of the valleys was there with them and they won a resounding victory.

Whether you are fighting battles in the hills or the valleys, God is God there.

I have been discovering that God is bigger than I knew. His love reaches to the heights and yet goes low to the deepest place I could go; he even meets me in the valley of the shadow of death.

What a truth to begin to grasp - the great expanse that is God is inseparable from the great expanse of his love.

Our God is the God of mountains and valleys. Wherever we are, his love is there.