Hills

Study the history of warfare very long and you’ll find a consequential battle that two armies clashed over to gain the high ground.  As long as men have fought, the high ground was always desired.  From there the battlefield commander can see enemy strengths, movements, and placements of strategic importance.   

At Bunker Hill (though most of the fighting took place on a smaller rise named Breed’s Hill), the Colonials battled the British, showing the much better organized, trained, and equipped Red Coats, that scrappy militia men were not to be taken lightly.  It would serve to further ignite the passion of freedom-seeking revolutionaries.  On the third day of fighting at Gettysburg, the Union Army repelled multiple waves of attacking Confederates along Cemetery Ridge, causing the bruised southern army to retreat back to Virginia, and turning the tide of the entire war.  It would prove to be the bloodiest battle Americans ever fought. On Hill 593 at Monte Cassino, the German army successfully beat back several attacks by the Allied Powers.  Day after day, American soldiers battled to get that expensive piece of real estate. Normandy, Hamburger Hill, Takur Ghar, and countless others are highlighted in our history books as significant moments of battle, focused on gaining the upper hand, and the “upper land”.  Simply put, the hill is important, and in some aspects, crucial.  

Capitol Hill, where battlefield gunfire and cannons are replaced by verbal attacks and character assassinations.  Sadly, today’s culture hears more about the shenanigans that occur here every day, than the heroic events on hills of times past.  And if the past is a picture of things to come, there will never be a victor; there will never be a loser; for it is a perpetual battle.  We need to claim a victory…and not a Republican one, nor a Democrat one.  We need a victory that rises above all this.  Our hope is found in what can only be described as, hands down, the greatest hill battle ever fought…Golgotha.

If there was ever a one-sided battle, this was it.  One man against the legions, the hordes, the masses of darkness.  Evil on all sides.  Crushing despair.  One man mocked, beaten, whipped, punctured, pierced, bloodied, and finally, nailed to a cross.  One man down for the count.  Or so it was thought.  You see, it WAS a one-sided battle.  One the enemy never saw coming.  Thinking they had won, the legions began to celebrate.  After all the tomb had a resident.  But then, the remarkable…no, the miraculous, occurred.  The heart began to beat.  The lungs filled with air.  Synapses started firing.  Tissue came to life.  And then…the supposedly defeated one, opened his eyes.  The face of love returned. The Father and Son were reunited.  And the tomb had a sudden vacancy.  Jesus took the hill.  He conquered the mountain.  And the Son of God now occupied the high ground.