This will date me. Yesterday I downloaded an old movie from iTunes and enjoyed watching every moment of it. As I soaked in the story and cinematography, I kept asking myself why I loved it so much.

Well, it was “Jeremiah Johnson,” and it’s the story of a mountain man right after the Civil War making a new life in the roughed Rocky mountains. The scenes are magnetic — filled with mountainous winter wonderland, wildlife, conflict, and compelling early American pioneer tales.

I grew up in Colorado and am so familiar with snow-filled mountain scenes and the harsh life that early American settlers had as they crossed the land pursuing their dreams. I am drawn to this terrain and history.

Jerusalem is surrounded by the Judean Hills. They are not rocky and soaringly high like the Rockies, but they are full of evergreens and pine trees. And those hills and trees do give me that little feeling of home where I grew up.

A couple of days ago my husband and I enjoyed a little drive, and I was just soaking in the beauty of the pine trees here. We got out of the car and filled our heads and lungs with the heady pine scent, and we reveled in the mountain scene around us.

That smell will always take me back to the Rocky Mountains where I grew up ice skating, sledding, hiking, camping, staying in log cabins, and sitting in wonder as a child, listening to the river bubble in the canyon.

It was there that I sat and considered this verse from Psalm, “Be still and know that I am God.”

That scripture still comes to mind in the quiet and majesty of the hills and trees wherever I am–no matter what country or place. It’s so easy to imagine the greatness of God when life stops and I soak in earthly beauty.

I realized though in that instant with the Judean hills around me filled with evergreens that the home I was longing for was really heaven… not Colorado.