archives: april 2009

what is it with us christians & mountains?

by craig borlase

Every once in a while you see something that makes you think. In my case it’s usually The West Wing, but every once in a while something else creeps in and unpresses the pause button.

It was a mountain that did it for me last. A mountain rising up away from me, with rocks like razors and bare-footed teenage girls striding off up towards the summit ahead of me.

I was trying to follow them. The girls were doing their twice-daily trek up the mountain with their bright yellow 20 litre jerrycans filled up and balanced on their heads. Mine, well, it wasn’t doing so well with the balancing. And as for anything else about it, all I can tell you is that twenty litres of water works out at twenty kilos; five kilos heavier than the suitcase I’d packed for this two week trip out to rural Uganda.

I was out here with a Tearfund team to make a film about water and sanitation. Sounds dull? Perhaps, but the reality was anything but. We found out that for the 900 million living without access to clean water, or the 2.5 billion living without decent sanitation, water really is life, and without enough of it, death is often close behind.

But back to the mountain. There I was, struggling under the weight when it struck me: us Christians are big fans of creation metaphors. We take shelter under God’s wings, we want to catch the fire and have God’s blessings rain down upon us. And we know that we’re not supposed to want to spend too much time up there on the top of the mountain. We’re not meant to crave a life made up of solely of mountaintop experiences, of spiritual highs, but to learn to value, respect and learn from the times when our lives feel as though they are being lived down in the valleys.