VANTAGE POINTS
"I went on a run in a mountainous area in Arizona recently and took pictures with my phone camera at different intervals. At a thousand feet up the mountain I had a reasonably good view. The terrain was beautiful, and I could see a few of the homes surrounding the area where I had begun my run. As I went another five hundred feet, then another thousand, then another five hundred, my perspective changed. At each turn of the mountain, I could see more and more of the land I had traversed. I had a much more spacious, higher altitude view as well. I could now see the entire development of homes from where I had started, as well as an expansive valley beyond the housing development on one side and a whole new range of mountains that had just come into view on the other side.
"I was covering two thousand feet of altitude change, and with those shifts in altitude and the multiple turns and switchbacks, I could see more and more landscape. The higher I got, the more I could see of the shadow side and previously hidden aspects of the mountain range. At the summit, I saw where I had come from, but I could also see entirely different mountains and new housing developments I hadn't even known existed. A higher altitude doesn't make a place superior, but it does provide the setting for a broader view. There is more available landscape to view, a greater amount of complexity to behold -- more variety, more beauty, more options.
"As we proceed through stages of faith, this is precisely what happens to us. Stages of faith are like high-altitude vantage points."
~Ron Martoia, The Bible as Improv
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