Gazing out my office window, a ballet of chaos fills my lower vision. Thundering semis shutter, bellowing their disapproval at flea-like taxis. Herds of pedestrians snake between hulking, impatient SUVs. Toro Blancos snort in and out of their stall … gobbling up and disgorging their prey. Young legs climb to safety above the Interamericanna, while knees too old for stairs cross the pulsing vein of metal mortality. The stage below me presents a chaotic dance that somehow works.
If I lift my eyes even ten degrees, everything changes. Above the highlines rests a rugged and beautiful peace. Before combustion clambered along filled with its hurried and harried cargo, the scene looked very much the same. A caballero looking out from under his sombrero pintado loved the same mountains when this was a dusty path through the jungle. We have worried the hillsides with our wrinkled roads, but we have not aged them. A humble sort of quiescence floods my soul when I take time to lift my eyes. Mountains tell us the truth about man … and God. Mountains remind me that I am passing and God is not.
The setting sun runs the rim’s rugged shadow down over El Valle … reminding me that quickly I have passed half a century. The rains leave for their summer vacation and the verdant green becomes dusty brown. God’s Word is so accurate … “My days are like a lengthened shadow, and I wither away like grass.” Psalm 102:11
This Psalm, so replete with examples of human brevity, reminds us that our world is also passing. The hills seem eternal, but they are not. “In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment. Like clothing you will change them and they will be discarded. But you remain the same, and your years will never end.” Psalm 102:25-27
Lifting my eyes above the lines reminds me of the timeless, changeless Creator who predated and outlasts all my earthly troubles. I say with another Psalmist, “I lift up my eyes to the hills— where does my help come from? My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth.” Psalm 121:1–2
