Elevation Profile

Recently, with our youngest daughter moving to her own house, we had a room to redecorate.  I wanted this room to contain all the things from other rooms that didn't belong in there.  I also wanted it to reflect our favorite hobby, hiking and backpacking.

I had seen a mountain mural on Pinterest and decided it was something I would like to do in this room, only I wanted the elevation profiles on the mural to reflect the profiles of actual hikes we have taken.

Elevation profiles are simple things, they show only the rise and fall of mountains and vallies.  Yet when I see some elevation profiles I know well the place the map represents because I have been there.  My brain fills in what the profiles leave out based on experience and knowledge.

This is our mountain mural.  When I look at it I see Blood Mountain, GA.  I see the Virginia Creeper Trail in VA.  I see Springer Mountain, GA.  I see Mount LeConte and the Boulevard Trail -- our first hiking/backpacking experience, forever etched in our memories by the shear amount of novice mistakes we made.  

Much like my mural, whose lines are so simple, but represent so much to my heart, the Lord takes His written Word and writes it in our hearts.  Those  words represent so much more than the sum of their letters because His Spirit quickens them and makes them true to us, not only in our minds but in our lives.  He uses these to help us "grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ." (2 Peter 3:18.)

"For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind and write them in their hearts; and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to Me a people."  Hebrews 8:10

"And this is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, 

and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent." John 17:3