I made God to be a mountain, the way that mountains are lovely but fearsome, how the morning alpenglow moves and calms your soul, yet the mountains can kill you if you tread their trails to their high places without respect. There is a dread to them, and so a dread to God.
Two men bringing the ark to Jerusalem on a shifty ox cart lifted a steadying hand—a good thing—but were ruined by the very presence of God. He scorched a mountaintop to blackness, opened the earth to consume Korah and his sons, and brought calamity to the house of David for killing Uriah and raping Bathsheba. I think of Absalom hanging by his hair in a tree, impaled and dying with his blood dripping down the spear hilt. The Lord visits wickedness upon the children of the guilty.
But Moses climbed the mountain through the fire and smoke to find God there, and the God he found was remarkably kind. This God who laid down so many rules about approaching his presence and even said that only Moses could approach—this God relented:
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