at the foot of the mountain

“When Jesus saw his ministry drawing huge crowds, he climbed a hillside. Those who were apprenticed to him, the committed, climbed with him.” (Matt 5:1 - Msg)

I sometimes wonder how far we will go to be with God. Jesus is surrounded by huge crowds of people, and to distance himself from these crowds, he climbs a hillside (other versions say “mountainside”), where only “the committed” follow. The rest of the crowd chooses not to follow on the hazardous terrain where Jesus leads, and the scripture doesn’t say why. It just says that there were crowds of people, and Jesus climbed a mountain, and only those committed followed him. When I read this, I see two types of people: one group follows Jesus along, and then when he decides to climb the mountain, their journey stops. These people are unwilling to follow Christ as he leaves the easy and treks into the difficult. The other group follows Jesus, and then when he decides to climb the mountain, their journey continues because there is nothing that will stop them from being with their master.

I wonder if I choose to be with God only when it is convenient. I wonder if I really am the committed that Matthew talks about in this story. My friend Cole recognized something similar as we were singing in worship: “I want more more more, I want more of you Lord.” What he recognized was that there are many people who will constantly be singing of how much more of God they need without ever singing of how much they will give. It seems to me that many times we sit in our stagnancy and ask for more of God when he is beckoning us up the mountain. Many times we are the people who stop at the foot of the mountain screaming to Christ as he climbs: “I want more,” instead of being the people who trek up the mountain with Christ, sacrificing our everything to be with him.