Pike's Peak

Recently, my husband and I had an opportunity to visit Colorado Springs.  One of our sight-seeing stops took us to Garden of the Gods where we spent a couple hours on a crisp, sunny morning hiking and enjoying the beauty of the giant, copper rock formations jutting up out of the ground in just the right location to make the Rocky Mountains their backdrop. 

As we walked the paths around Garden of the Gods, I was taking in what I thought would be the lesson of the day--an appreciation for the beauty of nature.  God and His mountains had another lesson in mind.  Especially, when we walked around one bend to see the clearest view of a snow-capped Pike’s Peak.  I pulled out my phone, aimed it at Pike’s Peak and took a beautiful photo. Then, remembering that my college-aged daughter had recently informed me that my “Instagram game was weak,” I decided this was the perfect opportunity to practice a selfie.  I convinced my husband to come pose with me, and we set ourselves up with what we thought was the perfect angle with us in the forefront and Pike’s Peak in the background. 

Snap.

Selfie done.

Ready to post. 

Here is where the real lesson of the day was learned. When I looked at my screen, Ben and I were in clear focus, but the beautiful snow-capped mountain was nowhere to be found.  The mountain that inspired the whole photo session had been blurred to unrecognizable.  It hit me like a boulder; the mountain is the goal.  The stuff right in front of our faces, or in this case our literal faces, are just distractions from the goal.  In life we set big goals for ourselves, sometimes they are so big it feels like we’d have to spend years working towards them, hike across half a state and up the side of a mountain to achieve them.  If we let the distractions of today, get in the way, we could lose sight of the goal all together.  So what goal is your Pike’s Peak?  What distractions of today are you letting cloud your view of the peak?  Whatever the goal, keep working toward it.  Whatever the distraction, remove it.  The beauty of the snow-capped mountain is worth the hike!