Betty and I traded a Tennessee timeshare week for a week in the mountains of Utah this October.  We had enough frequent flyer miles for airline tickets.  After arriving in Salt Lake City, we rented a car and drove five hours north to Yellowstone National Park.  Heaven will have mountains; I’m certain of that!  They were spectacular.

Our three nights at Yellowstone dawned on fresh snow-covered hills, about four inches each night.  It was a wet snow that stuck to all the evergreens.  Driving through the park was breathtaking!  The steam from geysers was even more dramatic in snow.  The buffalo were that much more visible on the white plains.  (And even more so when a herd of forty of these behemoths sauntered along the road within arms’ reach of our car!)

Fall colors were indescribably spectacular.  Bright yellow cottonwoods (similar to aspens), combined with reds, pinks, and greens among other foliage, all made more impressive against the fresh white snow and royal blue sky (after the morning snow clouds passed).

Betty and I have always loved the sights in the mountains … whether it’s Alaska’s towering Denali Range, the Colorado Rockies, California’s Sierra Nevada, Tennessee’s Great Smokies, New Hampshire’s White Mountains, or New York’s Adirondacks.  Who would want to sit around on dirty sand and sweat at the beach while gnats chew at your skin, when you could be enjoying the cool air and breathtaking scenery of mountain vistas?

But something special dawned on me on this trip.  God made all of these mountains primarily for His own pleasure.  He graciously allows us to enjoy them as well, especially when we enjoy them from the perspective of children awestruck at what a Heavenly Father has created.  But we can only enjoy them one-at-a-time.  While in Utah’s Wasatch Mountains, we enjoyed them fully … but only those particular mountains at that moment.  We could recall having seen the others in the past, but we could only admire the ones immediately before us.  But God enjoys them all at the same time, for He is fully present at all those locales at the same moment in time.  At this very moment He is gazing on the Smokies and the Adirondacks and the Rockies!

And not only those.  At the same time He is enjoying all of those, He is also enjoying mountain ranges at the bottom of the sea, on the far side of the moon, on Jupiter’s distant planets, and on planetary bodies beyond the range of our most powerful telescopes.  He is right now delighting in the sight of mountains you and I will never see.  He is enjoying all of them at the same time.  And he is enjoying them with a delight that exceeds any pleasure we will ever be capable of experiencing.

But guess what?  He tells me in His word that what He enjoys most of all is pouring His love into my heart, and using me to exalt His name.  Wow!

That’s one of the things I learned about God on our vacation in Utah.  Did you learn something about Him on yours?  I'd love to hear about it.