by Zach Kincaid
That afternoon walk changed everything.
God saw, in the brush,
two people exposed to their guilt.
The perfect sky dripped blue.
The full moon cut itself to shavings.
The tempered ocean crashed its shores.
The relentless refrain began,
where are you, where are you,
where are you?
The reply revealed their disobedience.
Cast out onto a bewildered world,
Eden lay abandoned, a stripped-down utopia.
And God watched them leave.
After they had gone some distance,
he bundled the garden and tossed it to the ends of the earth.
Eden made the mountains.
Caught between floor and ceiling,
they offer a crippled communion.
Heaven’s halls mopped up that dying generation,
and a floating box came to rest on Mount Ararat.
There, God promised.
Early in the morning, Abraham and his son
followed an upward path to a lonely peak.
There, obedience met provision.
Hidden in the thicket a prepared ram
clothed their offering with desperate atonement.
There, God reconciled both Pelion and Ossa.
The mountain bush housed God’s fire,
and marked out the misery of his people.
There …I am that I am.
As a hen gathers her chicks, Mount Sinai invited –
her freedom replaced Egypt’s bondage and Olympus’ fear
There, the law leveled ignorance and readied the soul’s renewal.
In a mad sprint, Elijah escaped to the mountains
only to have them move when God’s back leaned in.
There, God whispered.
Up on a mountainside, Jesus went to pray,
to dine with God in the devil’s temptations and in transfigured glory.
There, God gave faith to move with love, see with hope, and know with certainty.
The mountains melt like wax; they smoke from your touch.
You water them from your upper chambers.
There, you drip wine; it runs down the hills on the feet of good news.
Your righteousness is a mighty mountain that
shakes to offer confidence in your unfailing love.
There, your song of joy and redemption rings true.
Promises, provision, fulfillment, truth,
words of life, a soft answer, songs of joy,
heaven’s wine, the praying Son of God…
“Fall down and hide us,” they will say, at last, to the mountains,
but God has weighed them. They will not assist a repeat of Eden.
Instead, here, at the end of all things, God brings eternity.