Samantha Christopher

How glorious you are! more splendid than the everlasting mountains!
-Psalm 76:4

Dear Friends in Christ,

A little over nine months ago, a dear friend and I set off from Columbus on our three-day cross-country road trip to Tucson.

I had said my goodbyes to family and friends, taken my friend to two of my favorite spots for breakfast in Columbus (Buckeye Donuts on campus and One Line Coffee in the Short North), and we had chosen our playlist for the long days ahead. As the scenery outside the car window shifted from midwestern fields to the rolling hills of the Ozarks, from the mind-bogglingly empty landscape of Oklahoma to the dry and hot ranches of Northern Texas, we wondered what majestic vistas lay in store for us as we passed through New Mexico and into Southern Arizona. We imagined soaring mountains and miles and miles of cactus, perhaps even a tumbleweed along the way. We were not disappointed.

As we passed through the southern portions of New Mexico and drove along I-10 to Tucson, our mouths dropped at vista after vista, each more stunningly beautiful than the last. It seemed as if this landscape had never changed and was immeasurably ancient.

How glorious you are! more splendid than the everlasting mountains!

The second of our morning psalms for today, Psalm 76, is a song of praise and thanksgiving for God’s might and judgment in the face of injustice and oppression. The psalmist thanks God for his deliverance and bids us to make a vow and bring a gift to “him who is worthy to be feared.”

Living in a place as wonderfully and fearfully beautiful as the Sonoran desert in the shadow of the mountains that circle our city, it can be easy for that beauty and majesty to become mundane, part of the every day, a background to the business of this life.

The next time you are out-and-about, I encourage you to take a moment to pause and take in the majesty of the Catalinas and our environment and give thanks that we were lucky enough to be born in a time when these mountains were here, when this area was habitable, and that God is gracious and loving enough to have crafted it all for his glory, which is far greater than the glory of those mountains.


Your Sibling in Christ,
Sam Christopher