I remember the first time I saw a mountain. I might have been eleven years old. I had not really travelled much, except to the beach for family vacations. I loved the beach, but to me the beach was defined as “fun,” and I had a deep longing in my heart for something beautiful. I wanted to see mountains. I remember pestering my parents about wanting to go and see “the mountains.” My heart ached for a beauty only these cathedrals of nature could define. So my father took me to see my first mountains.

My father had spent summers of his youth with family in the “hollers” of West Virginia. I have a fond memory of our trip to visit his family there, and how happy he was to grant his little girl’s wish when he said those six incredible words to me: “Look, Monica, here come the mountains!” as his finger spanned the horizon ahead. From the back of the car I pressed through the gap between the front seats, and hanging over my father’s shoulder I drank up my first look at a mountain. I remember that view, and I remember the ache in my heart was something like that love-sick feeling at the start of a romance. I thought: “Someday I wanna live in a quiet place with a mountain view, in a small town in the middle of nowhere…” Those first mountain views romanced me. But I did not know they were just an appetizer.

I was Twenty-four when I first sunk my teeth into the mountains of the American West. I found myself standing in Tuolumne Meadows with the live cyclorama of the High Sierra’s embracing me. I believed nothing could top that beauty until I first sat on the edge of Lack Jackson and looked up at the Grand Tetons as their reflection sparkled in the waters thousands of feet below their peaks. I was so moved by the view of the Tetons that, though I had never really tried to draw before, I broke out my journal and started sketching them in it. And still I did not think that view could be topped! But, in awesome surprise I found myself backpacking through Glacier National Park to a precipice where Doug and I stood thousands of feet high looking across dazzling jagged peaked mountains with walls and walls of waterfalls gushing the span of the range, and wild flowers splashed vibrantly among the rough rock. I remember feeling like I wasn’t in a real place, like I was in a painting. It was like something from someone’s deepest imagination poured out onto a canvas with that urgent need to create and share something beautiful. It spoke to my heart like a poem or a love song. I wasn’t on earth! No, it was more like what some might call a taste of heaven.

Just the other day Grace and I were driving together up Routes 77 and 81 through North Carolina and Virginia. It was a stellar day with perfectly blue skies, puffy white clouds and… mountains! There are a few places along this route that always catch me with that same nostalgic breathlessness of a first kiss. I said to Gracie: “Look at those mountains out there!” and she said “Oooooo!” Whenever she sees something pretty she says: “Ooooooo” with a melodious rising and falling of the “O.” It just tickles me. She often follows her “Ooooo’s” over pretty flowers, bright moons, cute dresses and beautiful views with a rousing: “I WIKE it!”

What a mind bending concept to think that Grace has no idea what “beautiful” is or means, yet at 21 months when she sees something beautiful she responds with wonder and enthusiasm. Somewhere deep wired in us lies this intrinsic notion of what “beautiful” is. We all know it. We all pine for it. In the same way our hearts ache for the love of another, our hearts ache for a connection to something beautiful. We all have our favorite colors, our favorite places and picturesque views. There is this soul aching desire that is beyond us. Why? Where does that heart-skipping hunger emanate from? It comes by design because God fashioned us this way. He made us with a longing for beauty, and a drive to seek it because every piece of beauty in the world is a reflection of Him. And everything beautiful that’s ever existed was made for the purpose of romancing our hearts with His extravagant love.

As we were driving the other day I said “Gracie, look at how much God loves us! The mountains are shouting out how much he loves us, they are so pretty!” And as She “Oooooed” my heart raced knowing at that moment I was again feeling the Lord’s loving embrace, just as I had felt it in the moment I stood surrounded by the mountains of the High Sierras and waterfalls of Glacier. I imagined it as something from deep within someone else’s imagination that they had to pour out onto a canvas spilling out an expression of their passionate love. And it was. Only the canvas was not paper, but the very earth. And the artist was no mere mortal putting paint strokes to page, but the very creator of the universe lavishing out His artistic genius as a passionate witness crying out to each soul: “I love you! I love you! I love YOU!”

The Lord has romanced me with the mountains. Every chance I get I sit on the back porch of my little house tucked in the Appalachian Mountains in the middle of nowhere, and I watch the sun sneak away behind them with a warm glow that fades to a cool blue night sky of twinkling stars. It is quiet, but for the sound of peepers and crickets singing out in springtime. Each time this one small life is reassured of the reality of God’s love, like he painted every Mountain View, every vibrant sunset, and every starry sky just for me.

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. (Psalm 19)

Let the sea resound, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it. Let the rivers clap their hands, let the mountains sing together for joy; let them sing before the LORD… (Psalm 98)

As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the LORD surrounds his people both now and forevermore. (Psalm 125)

And so the romance continues… “Oooooo! I wike it!”