“Who art thou, O great mountain? before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain: and he shall bring forth the headstone thereof with shoutings, crying, Grace, grace unto it.” (Zechariah 4: 7)
Cultural anthropologists have discovered that ethnic groups which remain in the mountains never thrive, never prosper.
Those peoples which people the plains, which expand along low-lying lands prosper and thrive.
Stanford Professor Thomas Sowell is one of the most widely respected columnists and academics in syndicated print, and he spends an extensive amount of his writing exploring these cultural differences, distinctions which rise about race, color, and other pseudo-academic metrics trotted out by professors to justify hollow government programs.
Let’s consider the physical/geographical reasons for these distinctions, then pursue more symbolical/scriptural/spiritual implications for this phenomenon.
Why do ethnic groups stay in the mountains when they could inhabit lower-lying and flat lands?
The mountains afford protection from marauders. The need for security on all sides afflicts every member of the human race, and the comfort of high, rocky places proves too easy for men and women to resist.
Why do mountain-based individuals fail to thrive, unlike communities which plant themselves then proliferate in lower-lying lands?
Individuals who seek security in the mountains isolate themselves because of the geography which lifts them up and away from other people. Mountains prove difficult for travels to navigate. The land is unsuitable for farming, the essence of civilization, since farming permits mankind to prepare his basic needs in advance and afford him leisure time. The same people who insist on inhabiting the mountains, the same groups which cannot establish farms and herds, often rely on theft, pillaging, and out-right barbarism to survive. Such people are not only unhabituated to interacting with other people, they develop survival skills which clash with civilized communities in the plains.
Individuals who live in the mountains, isolated from other people, do not trade, do not engage, do not learn new skills. They remain uninterested in the worlds around them, in part because they are unaware of them, in part because they have no interest to travel. With no trade, with no experience with diverse cultures and innovations, mountain peoples do not advance.
Why should people who live in remote, high places seek anything outside of themselves, anyway? Such a stagnant existence does not change from the inside out, anyway.
Only peoples from the plains reach out into the world, driven by the possibilities of climbing higher terrain, of reaching to the top of mountains, oftentimes because the mountain is there. People who live on plains see everything from a lower level. The challenges which face them are acute, and the need to overcome them prominent. Those who live on the plains see nothing but plain around them, yet interact with other peoples whose lives are not as plain as theirs, or vice versa.
Those who live on plains see the lack in their surroundings. They realize that without effort, they cannot defend themselves. At the same time, they recognize the opportunities of waterways and pathways. They live off their own crops, they harvest the extra foodstuffs which they have raised, trade these goods, and with the spare time afforded them, they develop skills, crafts, and arts to travel further and trade more.
Such was the case with the Spanish, when the kingdoms of Castile and Leon joined under one monarchy. The pasture lands and farming interests of Western and Eastern Spain converged in one crown, and the same plain forces took on the occupying Muslims in Southern Spain.
When the Spanish expelled the Moors in 1492, their royalty commissioned explorers to acquire new lands. They reach the Canary Islands, where rugged mountain peoples were still subsisting in a stone-age existence, one which exposed them to the easy conquest. Mountain people who rely on their strength never last in the face of those who develop talents from their weaknesses.
Transforming these cultural/geographical realities into spiritual verities, those who live in the mountains typify those who live by their own strength, who trust in their own efforts, who rely on brute force instead of wisdom. Leaning on what they see, and advancing no further, they sit, self-satisfied, and do nothing.
Those who live in the plains represent those who make nothing of themselves, who realize that they are nothing on their own. Not trusting their efforts, they look for guidance from the Highest Power, and seeking His strength, they appropriate his prowess to overcome their weaknesses. They do not resist learning from others, either, since they have nothing, and thus have nothing to lose.
With this allegory of mountain people versus people of the plains, let us look at every challenge not as something to endure, nor something which we must overcome on our own. Regarding ourselves as nothing and God as everything, let us call on Him by the power and authority of His Jesus for every need, speaking His grace or unearned, unmerited favor to every mountain in our lives, and trusting in Him who is from the beginning, we can rest assured that He will raise bring down every mountain and raise up every valley (with every plain) in our lives, in ourselves.