Mountains

 

It only seems natural to follow the Living Water to its head streams - mountains. Jesus likes mountains especially the Mount of Olives. He often retreats to mountains to be by himself, sometimes he will take a few disciples. (Jn 6:3, 6:15, 8:1) Mountains are often associated with God like the mountain where God gave Moses the 10 commandments or with faith as in faith to move mountains. (Matt 17:20) It is from the mountains that our soil and water come. You can learn more about those in previous posts.

Where do mountains come from? The earth’s crust is made up of large plates called tectonic plates that fit into each other. These plates keep moving a few centimeters every year. Mountains form along the boundaries where the tectonic plates move towards each other converge (convergent boundaries). The tectonic plates collide, triggering deformation and thickening of the crust. This, in turn, leads to crustal uplift and mountain formation. This process is a horizontal compression that leads to deformation folding and faulting of layers into folds or wrinkles along the convergent plate boundaries. This crustal uplift can be either a hill or a mountain, depending upon the height and slope of the formation. But, to balance the weight of the earth's surface, much of the compressed rock is forced downward, producing deep mountain roots making mountains both upward and downward.

When the plates meet they can lift up or sometimes especially, where an oceanic plate meets a continental plate the oceanic layer will duck under the land layer and provide fissures foe magma to reach the surface. These are volcani moutains and there are thee kinds:

1. shield so named because the look like Roman shield that slowly ooze lava
2. cinder volcanoes which have pressure build until the erupt and lose their top like Mt St Helens did
3. composite which sometimes leak and sometimes blow

These type of mountains are often found along coasts or in the middle of the ocean where the crust can be thin.

So we have convergent mountains like the Himalayas, volcanic mountains and there is one other type of mountain a fault mountain which is caused when two plates slide by each other under pressure and one side lifts

 These crustal plates float atop a swirling mass of magma which surrounds the outer core of the earth which in turns surrounds the inner core. They have been moving for millenia that is why we have evidence of super continents like Pangaea, Laurasia and Gonwanaland. If you take a map of the world and cut out the continents you can piece them together and see how they fit together. We can expect this same process in the end times

"The sky was removed like a scroll when it is rolled up. Every mountain and island were moved out of their places." Rev 6:14

In the Old Testament God often provided in or from the mountains Gen 22:14 or even home to God

" But you have come to the mountain of Zion, to the place of the living God, to the Jerusalem which is in heaven, and to an army of angels which may not be numbered," Heb 12:2

We tend to think of mountains as large immovable obstacles I would posit instead that they are an opportunity for us to see the face of God.