People who pray regularly tend to have certain favorite places that they find more conducive to their prayer. Some may find being church the best place, or a certain quiet place at home; some people find walking through nature brings them closer to God, while others find looking over the ocean inspiring. I’m sure you’ve all seen those little signs that say Heaven is a little closer in a house by the ocean.

Specific places where we feel closer to God has a long history, particularly in the bible. Two of those places are the dessert and the mountaintop. We know for example that the early church fathers, as well as many Old Testament figures, spent a lot of time - if not their whole lives, in the dessert because that is where they communed with God. Even Jesus’ forty days in the dessert where He was tempted was a place where He felt the Father’s presence more powerfully than the devil’s.

In today’s scripture reading, we have two examples of finding God in the other place, on the mountaintop. In the first reading from Genesis, we hear the story of Abraham taking his son Isaac to the top of the mountain. Contrary to the dictates of the culture in which Abraham lived, on the mountaintop, he discovered that his God did not want human sacrifice like the pagan gods demanded. Instead, God provided an animal for the sacrifice and thus saved Isaac. As Abraham was getting to know this new God, He discovered a God of life and not of death.

In the Gospel reading today, the Apostles likewise, discover a revelation of God on the mountaintop. Jesus is transfigured before them and they see the fullness of God in the human person they had come to know in Jesus. That God-ness was dazzling and riveting and certainly something they would never forget.

Once again, the revelation took place on a mountaintop where people encountered God many times in the scriptures.

Where we choose to pray and where we encounter God in our prayer, is certainly unique to each of us. What is important is that we find places where God is more evident. This season of Lent is traditionally the time each year when we meet God and hear His call to us.

May we each find those special places and be summoned more deeply into the embrace of our loving God.