Into the Valley

“Remember those in prison as if you were their fellow prisoners, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering”. — Hebrews 13:3

I've stood in public markets in Haiti where you learned fast not to make eye contact. Where pointing a camera at someone felt like a small act of aggression because some believed it stole their soul. I've watched armed security take up posts around a build site in Guatemala while we mixed mortar and layed brick, building houses, schools, and churches, because the gangs were watching too. Being a Christian crew in that neighborhood put a target on our backs. In places I've been accross the world there's an awareness that faith costs something.... prison....or worse.

None of that danger followed me home. I can walk into any market, any church, any parking lot in Nashville and nobody clocks me as a threat for wearing a cross. That ease is not normal in most of the world, and it's not guaranteed to stay normal here either. It's worth naming as a gift, freedom is not a given.

There's a moment in Matthew 17 that keeps circling back to me when I think about those trips. Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up a mountain, and He's transfigured in front of them — dazzling, talking with Moses and Elijah, the whole scene charged with glory. Peter, overwhelmed, blurts out: let's build something here. Let's put up shelters and stay. Let's make this the destination.

"'Get up,' he said. 'Don't be afraid.'... As they went back down the mountain, Jesus commanded them, 'Don't tell anyone what you have seen until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.'" (Matthew 17: 7-9) 

Jesus doesn't entertain it. Scripture simply says that as they were coming down the mountain, Jesus instructed them — no debate, no lingering. Get up and let's go. He leads the three back down toward Jerusalem, toward the cross, toward the actual work He came to do.

The mountaintop is real — the worship, the presence, the goosebumps. But it was never the assignment. The assignment is the valley: the market where eye contact is risky, the build site with a hired guard at the tree line, the office on a Tuesday when nobody's watching and nothing feels transcendent. Jesus didn't build a monument to the moment. He walked down and finished the work, even though it cost Him everything.

We're not immune to Peter's instinct. We want the retreat, the conference high, the spiritual mountaintop — and we want to stay there. But the calling was always to come down and build something in the valley, at whatever cost that requires.

Where have you tried to turn a mountaintop moment into a permanent address instead of fuel for the valley ahead?

What's one "valley" this week — a hard conversation, a thankless task, a place that costs you something — and walk toward it instead of around it.

Be grateful for the freedom you have. So many risked their lives to give that to you. And one gave His life and walks into the valley with you to do the work you've been called to do.