Shadows on Mountains

Today I drove quickly from school to home. Speeding past houses, as other cars sped past me. Distracted. My heart wandered and left my mind behind. My son talked incessantly in the background, but I struggled to grasp the words. "mmm, yeah, ok." My lips made the mantra of the mindless mommy acting the part of the listener.

But, in an instant I was jilted awake. Present. Here.

The picture before me causing my breath to catch in my throat. It wasn't anything particularly abnormal or unique, but there was meaning here. Meaning I was ensnared by.

The clouds speckled the open desert sky and as they did they cast shadows on the mountains in front of me.

Shadows on mountains.

Mountains, strong and stable. Unchanging.

Shadows, fragile and fleeting.

The mountains feel the darkness of the shadows, but despite their attempt, no matter how hard they try, shadows can't shake mountains.

And yet mountains can not keep the shadows away either.

These two things touch and yet they cannot move each other.

They kiss... ineffectively.

I wish I was more like the mountains. Strong and stable, despite the shadows cast on my life.

But I am not a mountain. The shadows in my life shake me. They move me to quake, quiver, and fall.

I am more like the water acted upon by the moon, then a mountain unaffected by the cold cast of a shadow.

And yet I am reminded, or closer still, I remember, a simple truth.

Shadows dance on the mountain of the most high God.

Rejoicing in the journey, Bethany Stedman