This past week, we took 39 students and chaperones skiing. Along the way we had lots of fun, a few scrapes and bruises, and some Bible studies on getting to know God and our identity in Him. Before we left, I promised myself I would attempt a Black Diamond slope this year. If you don’t know, slopes are rated: greens are beginner level, blues are intermediate level, and blacks are “expert only” (not that I am anywhere close to an expert on skis, but I’ve got to keep up with these fearless teenagers who are in ski lessons one day and going down blacks the next!). After practicing on easier hills the first day and half of the second, I was ready to try that black run. So, I asked my more accomplished friends to go with me and boarded the lift that could lead to my demise. At the top of the hill, I was talking to a ski patrol member and after watching me ski a few feet, she asked if I knew this was a black slope. I told her I did and headed down hill. She quickly followed and told me I couldn’t zig-zag so slowly across the mountain or I might cause someone else to get hurt. So, I started going faster and found myself going REALLY fast – on my belly! In fact, I traveled this way for about 60 yards. Not to be daunted, I got back up and skied twenty more feet before falling again and this time, I slid 10 feet while my skis stayed still. Although this was not the worst fall of the day, having to climb back up the mountain to retrieve my skis was excruciating – it was steep; it was slick; and it was cold. I fell more times climbing up that stretch than I did on the entire rest of the hill. It wore me out and after getting my skis on, I sat in the snow for a few minutes to catch my breath and recover. I am happy to report I did eventually get back on my skis and, deciding to ignore the ski patrol’s instructions to go faster, slowly made my way to the bottom with Brian’s and Donna’s encouragement and support. After this harrowing experience, we ate lunch (I needed a break!). In the afternoon, we wisely decided to keep to the intermediate blue slopes and amazingly, these seemed much easier than they had earlier in the day and I skied much better on them, hardly falling at all.
In Wednesday night’s youth Bible study, we talked about ways God speaks to us and through nature and personal experience were two of them. On the slopes the other day, I believe God gave me a message. Perhaps you will find it as inspiring as I did. Sometimes God asks us to do hard things that seem beyond our ability or skill level. He may not intend for us to even succeed at that hard thing, but he uses the experience to prepare us for other work that would seem impossible before, but after the challenge we just faced seems easy and we feel well-prepared and confident in our ability to handle it. Our church is about to face a hard thing—being without a pastor for an indeterminate amount of time. We have a choice. We can symbolically sit at the bottom of the mountain and do nothing in the interim time, heading down a path of slow death. OR we can do the hard thing and “get on the ski lift,” committing to do good ministry, reach out to the unchurched in our community, care for each other, and commit to the interim as a time of fruitful growth and preparation for the next task God calls us to. We may fall down. We may be told we are taking on a task too big for us in our current state. We may get tired and want to stop. But the fact is, if we persevere, we will reach the goals we set for ourselves IF we remember to encourage one another and rely on God’s strength and experience. For “The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it” (1 Thessalonians 5:24). “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything” (James 1:2-4).
Let’s conquer a mountain together!