The breathtaking panoramic view from the mountaintop defied words. My family and I visited Alaska a few years ago and experienced something incredible. We rode a train from a small village up a steep mountain grade all the way to the summit. From that vantage point, we could see the snow-capped mountain peaks to the east and the vast Pacific Ocean to the west. The village at the bottom of the mountain looked like a small drawing in a children’s book. How vast the world looked from that mountain vista!

I sat at my office desk this morning and experienced a Revelation 8:1 moment: “…there was silence in heaven for about half an hour.” Stunned silence froze me in the moment as tears rolled from my eyes and chill bumps covered my entire body. A vision passed before me, reminding me of that breathtaking Alaska view. I saw something as I had never seen it before in my life as a Christian.

I spend most of my time reading and editing content at the Global Ministry Center of the Church of the Nazarene. Editors frequently drill down to evaluate particular words, sentence structures, or paragraph flows in an article. Think of your schedule for today. Like me, I am sure you have appointments to keep, work tasks to complete, and household responsibilities to fulfill. We usually have more to do in a day than hours to do it. So we easily fall into the routine of simply checking off the items on each day’s task list.

We often live our Christian lives in much the same way. We attend small group Bible studies, committee meetings, and worship services. We read our Bibles and pray on a daily basis. We fellowship with other believers and hold one another accountable in our walks with our Lord. We too easily fall into the rhythm of living our Christian lives through routine.

With attention focused on today’s spiritual exercises, we lose sight of the big picture.

King David wrote one of my favorite lines in the Bible. It holds deeper meaning for me every day. Psalm 37:25 reads, “I was young and now I am old.” I see life from a much different perspective today than I did at the beginning of my walk with Christ. I now see a bigger picture of our spiritual pilgrimage than I used to see. This brings me to this morning’s mountaintop experience.

I read all of the articles for this issue of Holiness Today for a final time in one sitting. That’s when I saw it: God’s masterful plan for our journey of grace. I saw it from start to finish, from my first awakening to God’s desire to live in relationship with me all the way through the hills and valleys of the sometimes-winding journey to the day He welcomes me home at earth’s finish line. But that’s not the end of this journey of grace, not by a long shot. It’s just the beginning of an eternal walk with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Every man, woman, youth, and child in this world experiences God’s grace in some measure. God offers it to everyone. He lovingly moves all those who cooperate with His grace into ever deepening levels of relationship with Him. It takes a lifetime of walking with the Lord to realize just how amazing God’s grace toward us is. I know we have schedules to keep today, places to go, and things to do. However, I want to challenge you to stop whatever you are doing right now, recount the gracious work of God in your life, and see the big picture of the journey of grace you are on with Him. The view from the mountaintop will leave you breathless!

Frank Moore is editor in chief of Holiness Today. 

Holiness Today, March/April 2021

Please note: This article was originally published in 2021. All facts, figures, and titles were accurate to the best of our knowledge at that time but may have since changed.