Ambition: Fifteen Minutes At The Top

Send forth your light and your truth, let them guide me; let them bring me to your holy mountain, to the place where you dwell.

Psalm 43:3

Mount Everest towers five and one-half miles above the face of the earth. The mystical mountain has lured countless adventurers to conjure up grandiose plans to scale its pallid peak.

George Mallory was once asked why he wanted to ascend Everest’s summit. “Because it is there!” came his revealing response. The ambition to conquer, to achieve, to excel—it has always driven men.

Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, his guide, led the first successful assault against the intrepid Everest. Week after week they inched up the face of the world’s tallest temptation. Herculean odds opposed them. Avalanches threatened to claim their very lives. Deep crevasses resisted negotiation. High winds howled their haunting warnings. Extreme steepness defied their ingenuities. Thin air sapped their strength.

As they ascended they continued to build new camps. Each of the seven succeeding camps grew smaller as more and more of the expedition team retreated from the severe strain of the immobile, inflexible pinnacle.

In his autobiography Edmund Hillary described the exhilaration of becoming the first to arrive at Everest’s apex. At 11:45 A.M. on May 29, 1953, Hillary and Norgay stood on top of the world.

But here’s the interesting point. Fifteen minutes after they arrived, the raw fury of naked nature forced them to begin their descent. As Hillary recorded in his diary, unless they began the retreat back down the precipice to their base camp immediately, nightfall would overtake them, and they would perish in the elements. Fifteen minutes at the top. All of that effort and sacrifice to stand for fifteen minutes on top of the world.

Almost everyone has his Everest, some goal to scale the upper heights, some ambition to make it to the top, some motive to walk among the great. People often describe their search for human dignity along the line of climbing the peak of a temporal summit. Human dignity actually is found on a mountain, but it is the holy mountain of God.

Most men climb the wrong mountain. As the cliché says, “I climbed my ladder to the top, only to find out it was leaning against the wrong wall.” Is it worth it? Is fifteen minutes on top of the temporal world worth the price paid?

When men pursue selfish ambitions, they invariably climb a corporeal mountain where no man may rest. It is a mountain of loneliness. When Christ ascended into the mountains, His goal was never self. Rather, He went there to meet with the Father. The only mountain worth climbing is the one which ascends to the Father.

The goal of the Christian life is to ascend the holy hill. It is to surrender the self-will of ambition which strives for human achievement at the expense of knowing God personally. The independent spirit wants Everest. The surrendered spirit wants the holy hill. The essential question is, “Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place?” (Psalm 24:3). Jesus offers a passport to the holy hill, to a mountain of rest.

Everyone has his Everest. Do you have some mountain of ambition you are trying to scale? Only a weary few stand at the top. And even those, after fifteen minutes of glory, are forced by the laws of nature to descend. The older men must make way for the younger ones—they, too, want their fifteen minutes at the top. Is it worth it?

Are you climbing the wrong mountain? Are you ascending a hill where you can dwell with God, or will your mountain offer fifteen minutes of fame? If you have been climbing the wrong mountain, ask God to redirect your ambition. He will refocus your affections on Himself.

If you have been climbing a temporal mountain—a mountain of selfish ambition, God wants you to retreat. Locate His holy hill on the map of your mind. Find Him, for He lives on a mountain great and high. “Exalt the Lord our God and worship at his holy mountain, for the Lord our God is holy” (Psalm 99:9). It is a mountain from which we need never descend. The choice is fifteen minutes or forever.

I SURRENDER

Holy Father, I have been climbing a mountain of selfish ambition. I have been climbing the wrong mountain, looking for fifteen minutes at the top. I surrender my selfish ambitions to You and ask You to forgive me for my folly. Send forth Your light and Your truth, let them guide me; let them bring me to Your holy mountain, to the place where You dwell. Show me how I may ascend Your holy hill and worship You acceptably. Amen.