Mountaintops and Mundane: Encouragement for Everyday Life

When I was growing up, my father indoctrinated my siblings and I in the study of his favorite bands and artists like Stevie Wonder, Duran Duran, Peter Gabriel, Van Halen and others. All the previously mentioned musicians are great, incredible even, but none got more David Sanders carplay than U2 and Coldplay. 

Riding in the back seat shoulder-to-shoulder on the black cloth seats, my siblings (Abigail, Isaac, and Elijah soon after) and I would sing along to the lyrics of Bono and Chris Martin as if we were on stage with them, instead of just riding back home from school. The car was electric. We would have clapping motions down to the T for Coldplay's "Viva la Vida." Our beloved "Pat Song," otherwise known as U2's "City of Blinding Lights" would start a frenzy. We were the superfans, U2 and Coldplay were the players, and Dad was the DJ. What a life.

But as the years went on, I found new bands and artists that would take up greater percentages of my music listening time. But as the dedicated music listener I so often claim to be, I would always be able to come back to Coldplay or U2 when they released some new music, even the infamous U2 album Songs of Innocence that Apple thought was a great idea to put on every device imaginable.

In the fall of Freshman year, at the height of my social experience my good buddy Connor Bjerke and I, the only Coldplay fans of our friend group, decided to sit down and listen to their newest album “Everyday Life,” song by song in his dorm. There were great songs and not-so-great ones, but the song that stuck with me was the title track “Everyday Life” and a specific line in the chorus. 

(If you've caught on, I love to pick out specific songs and find the Christian spin on them, and this lyric is a prime example):

“Gotta keep dancing when the lights go out and hold tight for everyday life.”

Outside of the extravagant orchestral sound leading into the second verse and the bridge, I was awestruck with the spiritual applications that draw from this line, and during a worship service one night, I was brought to Hebrews 12:1-2, the perfect verse in coordination with the song:

“Therefore, since we also have such a great cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us lay aside every hindrance and the sin that so easily ensnares us. Let us run with endurance the race that lies before us, keeping our eyes on Jesus, the source and perfecter of our faith. For the joy that lay before him, he endured the cross, despising our shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

The thing that came to mind in conjunction with the Coldplay song was this battle between mountaintop moments, the spiritual peaks, and normal, everyday life. Many of us know the preceding passage in Hebrews, the faith hall of fame. These were just a few of the great cloud of witnesses, the spiritual heroes, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters in the faith of the Bible who had their stories etched in God’s Word forever. 

Over the course of the forty verses, people like Noah, Abram, Sarah, Samson, and others are documented as people who had great faith either in a specific instance or their entire life. Their moments of faithfulness to God and his faithfulness to them in times of complete submission and surrender to the will of God can be seen as mountaintop moments. 

We love to read, hear, see, and experience mountain top moments because western Christianity has done a great job in cultivating and creating these experiences. This is by no means a critique of the state of Western Christianity. It’s just fact. If I asked any of you what moments come to mind, it might be the final night at camp, a church retreat, or a conference. You may be reminded of a series of deep conversations with your closest friends or life group. You might even think of a time in creation, standing on a literal mountaintop. 

But with every experience, you think, "It doesn’t get better than this.” We all have our snapshots, anecdotes, and episodes of life where the flame is flickering, and we don’t want it to go out.

But we pack our bags, say our goodbyes, and head home. The final statement is always, “Take what you experienced here and share it with everyone else!” We laugh on the bus for the first thirty minutes of the trip home, but we slip in the ear buds, take a nap, and we’re back to “reality.” 

We’re back home on a spiritual high that lasts for a couple weeks, but then we fall back into the normal doom and gloom and day to day schedule until the next year. Before we even realize it, we fall into patterns and cycles of mountaintops and valleys, and contrary to how the song goes, we stop dancing when the lights go out. We let go and fall apart in everyday life.

But we don’t want that! We want pinnacles and mountaintops, not hills and plateaus and especially not the God-forsaken valleys! We want to share personal moments of revival, large, sweeping moments of change in our lives, not small increments of growth. We want to say we’re doing great, not fine. We want to live as if every day’s a Friday and forget the possibility of a Monday. 

Yet if that was the case, we would be hiding our true nature. We would be painting our life as our Instagram feed. We would be kidding ourselves if we truly thought that the love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control of the Spirit was only for our benefit and only came on our mountaintops.

The secret to living the Christian life is living the Christian life in its entirety. Going back to Hebrews 12, the author tells his audience to run the race with endurance, not a 100-meter sprint or 30-minute Peloton workout. That means that we run, full of the spirit of holiness, grace, and truth who pushes us to keep our eyes on Jesus, because he loved the mountaintop moments too, no doubt, but with his best friends, the Twelve, he lived life every day with them. Every moment. 

That’s the beauty of it all. Everyday life in Christ in fellowship with the Spirit is where we see our most growth in Christ, because that is when we’re sad, angry, anxious, and hurt, which is when we need to lean on him the most.

So, friends, this has not been a discouragement of the mountaintop moments. I love them dearly, but rather an encouragement to continue on when we don’t feel as motivated to live the life God calls us to, or even if we feel like God has been silent in moments of the daily dreariness that this world provides us. 

As the author of Hebrews says, the race is set before us, followers of Jesus have the prize. We endure the race because he endured the cross on our behalf and defeated the grave. We’re in the balancing act of “the already and not yet,” and in the moments of struggle, weariness, and anxiety, we must keep our eyes focused. 

Our source of life is the light of life who aims to mold us into images of Jesus when we are at our highest of highs and lowest of lows. There is fulness of joy and love never-ending in everyday life, and we gotta keep dancing when the lights go out. 

Before you go, hear this encouraging excerpt from Psalm 25:

Make your ways known to me, Lord; teach me your paths. Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; I wait for you all day long. Remember, Lord, your compassion and your faithful love, for they have existed from antiquity. Do not remember the sins of my youth or my acts of rebellion; in keeping with your faithful love, remember me because of your goodness, Lord.”

Psalms 25:4-7