From up here I feel gigantic. I feel like the clouds are mere inches above my head. On tiptoes I could reach up and pluck them from the sky. 

Up here the trees look like patches of weeds that incessantly line my garden bed. I could reach down and pull them all up from the root. Up here roads look like ant paths leading to and fro from one hill to the next, never mind that these “ant hills” are actually mountain passes, traversed by actual foot would take months.

But up here I feel like a child playing with my doll house. A mountain-side resort looks more like a toppled over barbie dream house than acres of luxury mountain living. 

I feel in charge up here. Like this little piece of scenery is my own to play with. I can make my own roads, snatch up houses like they were monopoly pieces on a game board and move them about. 

Up here, where the northern rim of the Grand Canyon can be barely glimpsed on the horizon, I feel larger than life. The air is sweeter, it tastes of optimism and pine. The literal mountain I am standing on is incomprehensible. How could it be that a 20 minute jeep ride could get me here, on top of the world, feeling so enormous? Like everything below me is mine to take, to just reach out and grab?

It’s not entitlement I feel, it’s grandeur and surprise. I feel larger than life standing here with everything so tiny below when usually I’m the one looking up at the world. I would have stayed here if I could. I would have sat and watched and just saturated myself in the moment. A delicious moment where my whole body felt peace and joy and reverence. Like a current of bliss was radiating throughout my whole body from the top of my head to the tips of my toes to the very inner most part of my soul.

I wanted this feeling to swallow me whole, wrap me in its goodness, give me over to its richness. What is this magical feeling, I wonder, as I try to take it all in. I’m a starving man, stranded on a desert who suddenly has a buffet at his feet. I can’t get enough. I want it all. I want to soak in this lovely melody of grandeur, beauty, and wholeness.

But the tour driver is beckoning us away. Time is up. Our time on this mountain, the sole souls allowed to drink in this beauty, is now slipping away. Give me one more minute I plead, I don’t want to leave the trees, the air, the mountain passes that trickle below my feet.

I close my eyes and pray thanking God for this opportunity, this perfect serenity, this fleeting moment that will now forever burn in my mind.

 I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to leave. 

A taste of what maybe God sees when he looks down from heaven. When this zoomed out view doesn’t show the close-ups of how corrupt we can turn against each other. Instead, this view shows the beauty of the grand world God built for us. It shows how we till the soil and make it our home. How we put our love into the things we do and make.

From far away we are so small, so easy for God to help us in our everyday struggles. How, if we choose him and have faith, these mountains will move, and his glory will shine through. His blessing will guide this crazy life we live. We will never be alone, or without his love.

Up here, from the top of the world, with God, all things are possible. I cling to this word as we drive down the mountain, down where problems are up close and personal, down where the troubles of life seem so big. 

Remember, I tell myself, nothing is too big for God.

 “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?” Matthew 16:26