The night before, our little car had whined in protest as we wound our way up the shoulder of Ben Nevis along a narrow, rutted lane. The sign out at the main road had offered bed and breakfast at a reasonable rate and we were ready for a night’s rest. Now we luxuriated in the comfort of a good bed as the sun bravely attempted to force its appearance through the proverbial Scottish mist.
Unknown to us, while we had blissfully slept, a couple more than three times our age had slipped quietly from the forester’s cottage where we were staying, and had climbed to the peak of Scotland’s highest mountain. They had done it on their honeymoon and had repeated the ascent every year since on their anniversary. It was not my idea of the way to spend more than forty anniversaries, but there was no doubt they both looked the picture of health as we sat across from them at breakfast. Why, I asked them, would they do such a thing?
They looked for a moment into each other’s eyes. Then, slowly, the man answered. “I suppose,” he replied in his soft brogue, “I suppose its the view from the top.”
That was something I would never learn lying in soft comfort in my bed. Expanded horizons come only by an assault on the mountains, an assault on ease and self and mediocrity.
Abraham was a man with the “uplook.” In Genesis 13:14, God invited him to lift up his eyes to look at the territory promised to him. It was a good thing for the patriarch to get the big picture, to see evidence of the generosity of God, to grasp the possibilities of such a promise.
His horizons would expand, however, in chapter 15. “Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them. . .” (v. 5), declared the Lord. That was a fair bit more than a little country at the eastern end of the Mediterranean. Could anything be more magnificent than a vision of the heavens?
Well, yes! In chapter 18, Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the Lord approaching his tent, coming with a message of blessing for Abraham and of judgment for Sodom. It would stir the friend of God’s heart to intercession.
In Genesis 22, Abraham would have the uplook twice. As he worked his way north through the Vale of Rephaim, the road suddenly broke over the last ridge and cast the ancient city of Salem at his feet. Just beyond it, he could see the place afar off, Moriah. There he had been called upon to offer his only son as a test of his devotion and as a prototype of his Messiah. The Lord Jesus could say, “Abraham rejoiced to see My day.”
Again, with his heart still beating wildly, with the voice of Jehovah still ringing in his ear, Abraham lifted up his eyes (v. 13) and saw the substitutionary ram caught by its horns in the thicket. What a look that was!
It is the desire of the staff of Uplook that the magazine will live up to its name. Our purpose is threefold:
1) THE GOSPEL UPLOOK: “Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest” (John 4:35). May we see North America as a mission field, and may the Lord of the harvest thrust out an army of laborers to gather the sheaves for Him.
2) THE PRAYER UPLOOK: “In the morning will I direct my prayer unto Thee, and will look up” (Ps. 5:3). We trust God will use the news items and reports in the magazine to exercise our hearts to regular, fervent, effective prayer for His work across the continent. It has been well stated that if you go in for money, education, organization, methodology — you get what man can do. If you go in for prayer, you get what God can do. We need what only God can do!
3) THE BLESSED HOPE UPLOOK:“Look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh” (Luke 21:28). Like this call to Israel in her darkest hour, we are called upon to “look for the Saviour” day by day. Because of the controversy regarding the order of events at His coming, some have refrained from speaking about the Lord’s return at all. But we need such a hope. It stirs the soul to holiness, the hands to action, and the heart to devotion.
May God help us in these crisis days to expand our horizons beyond the shallow views of this world. As they say in West Virginia, “Montani semper liberi” — mountaineers are always free.