Just as the roads in the Ozarks pass through many valleys, they also pass over many hilltops. It is great to top a hill and look at the beautiful view, especially this time of the year. In life, as well as in driving the Ozark roads, we pass through many valleys and go over many hilltops. Last week we looked at walking in life's valleys, but today let's look at life from the hilltops. On hilltops during life, things do not look too bad even if it is surrounded by valleys. From the hilltops we can see over the valleys and often what catches our attention is not the next valley, but hilltops in the distance.
As Christians, one of the hilltops that we have in our spiritual lives is the day we were baptized into Jesus Christ. What a great feeling it was to come up out of that water and realize that all our past sins had been forgiven by God. We wanted to shout with joy because of the gladness that was in our hearts. The great weight of our sins was lifted off our backs and we could stand up and look at the great hilltop of heaven with the realization that we were on the road to get there. Right then we were not concerned with how many valleys we would have to cross to get to that great hilltop because we could see it so plainly from the hilltop we were on. We had entered the strait gate that leads to life everlasting that Jesus spoke about in Matthew 7:13-14 and nothing could stops us from reaching our goal.
John wrote of the great hilltop that we are striving to reach in the book of Revelation. John gives us a glimpse right into heaven in Revelation chapters 21 and 22. John compared the beauty of heaven to that of a bride in her wedding gown! John also described heaven as a place of great beauty such as a great walled city with streets paved with gold. A city that needed neither sun nor moon to light it because God who is light will be there. A city were the river of life is it's source of water and also the tree of life is to be found. But one of the greatest joys of heaven, it is a place where the things of the valleys of this life cannot enter. In heaven there will be no pain, no sorrow, no death, no crying, because GOd Himself shall wipe all the tears from our eyes.
What a great picture John paints for us of that last greatest hilltop, heaven! Remember to look to that hilltop whenever you are on a hilltop in your life, but more importantly is the fact that when we are in the deep valleys of this life we can look toward this hilltop in God's word!