When the Clouds Break on the Summit

In 2019, mountaineer Sarah Maguire spent three days climbing through dense fog on the trail to Annapurna Base Camp in Nepal. The clouds hung so thick she could barely see ten feet ahead. She questioned why she had come at all. Then, on the morning of the fourth day, she unzipped her tent and gasped. The clouds had vanished. The Himalayan peaks stood around her in every direction — Annapurna, Machapuchare, Hiunchuli — blazing white against an impossibly blue sky. She dropped to her knees and wept. For twenty minutes she sat there, unable to speak, overwhelmed by a beauty she had always believed existed but had never seen so clearly. Then the clouds rolled back in.

Sarah says those twenty minutes changed everything. Not because the mountains disappeared when the fog returned — they were always there. But because she had seen them with her own eyes, and she could never unsee them.

That is what happened on the mountain in Matthew 17. Peter, James, and John had walked with Jesus through the ordinary fog of daily ministry. Then, for one shining moment, the veil lifted. His face blazed like the sun. Moses and Elijah appeared. The voice of the Almighty thundered from the cloud: "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to Him."

They had to come back down the mountain. The fog of ordinary life returned. But they had seen His glory, and they could never unsee it. Neither can we.