On Your Knees

In Touch and Live, George Vandeman writes:

A young stranger to the Alps was making his first climb, accompanied by two stalwart guides. It was a steep, hazardous ascent. But he felt secure with one guide ahead and one following. For hours they climbed. And now, breathless, they reached for those rocks protruding through the snow above them—the summit.

The guide ahead wished to let the stranger have the first glorious view of heaven and earth and moved aside to let him go first. Forgetting the gales that would blow across those summit rocks, the young man leaped to his feet. But the chief guide dragged him down. “On your knees, sir!” he shouted. “You are never safe here except on your knees.”

When we face what is transcendent and holy, we do so fittingly when we are on our knees.