Coming Down

Luke 9:28-36

Phrases that spoke to me today:
• spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem
• let us make three tents
• not knowing what he said
• this is my Son, my Chosen One; listen to him

Applying the Word to My Life:
Peter, James, and John go up the mountain with Jesus and watch His face and clothes turn dazzling white while Moses and Elijah show up talking with Him about what He's about to do in Jerusalem - His death. Even in the middle of that much glory, the conversation on the mountain is about the Passion still ahead. Whatever's dazzling about a moment like that, it doesn't rewrite what's waiting on the other side of it.

Peter wants to stay anyway. He offers to build three tents, one each for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah, not fully understanding what he's even asking for. He wants to enshrine the moment instead of carrying it back down into what's waiting at the bottom of that mountain. He's not wrong to want it to last. He's just wrong about how to keep it.

That's not just Peter's problem. Anyone who's had a real moment with Christ - a retreat that cracked something open, a Mass that felt different than usual, a prayer that actually landed - knows the pull to stay right there, like that feeling itself was the proof, the whole relationship. But covenant was never built to run on a feeling. Nobody's ordering you into it in that moment - you just keep choosing it, freely, the same way you would have kept choosing it in the dark. You don't owe the relationship a mountain to prove it's real. The actual test was never the peak. It's whether the love holds on the ordinary days on either side of it, especially the hard ones, when nothing is shining and nobody would notice if you let go.

A couple years back I gave the closing talk to my first group of high school guys. It was the last night after four years of being together. I used this exact passage that night, because it was the one that kept coming back to me while I prepared. I told them a life in Christ, a life lived in love, still doesn't mean a life without pain. Jesus knew His Passion was coming even in the middle of His own Transfiguration. Loving deeply doesn't buy you an exemption from loss - it just changes what the loss means once it comes.

I already missed that room before I'd finished saying goodnight. Standing in front of them that last night, I wanted to build a tent too - keep that room exactly as it was, keep that particular group of guys together forever. But that's not how any of it works, for them or for me. The moment doesn't last - Moses and Elijah are gone, and Jesus is standing there the same as He always looked. You come back down and keep living whatever's actually in front of you, carrying the glory instead of enshrining it.

That's what I think Peter eventually understood, once he came down from that mountaintop. The glory wasn't canceled by coming back down. It just went ahead of him, into everything that came next. I ended that night the same way I'll end here: you're a beloved child of God, made out of love, with a mission to spread that love to everyone around you - and that doesn't change no matter what's still ahead of you.

My Response for Today:
Today I'll carry whatever grace I've been given into whatever ordinary, hard thing is waiting for me.