The Devils Thumb, Or, My Life Right Now

"I tried left, then right, but kept striking rock. The frost feathers holding me up, it became apparent, were maybe five inches thick and had the structural integrity of stale corn bread. Below was thirty-seven hundred feet of air, and I was balanced on a house of cards. The sour taste of panic rose in my throat. My eyesight blurred, I began to hyperventilate, my calves started to shake. I shuffled a few feet farther to the right, hoping to find thicker ice, but managed only to bend an ice ax on the rock.

Awkwardly, stiff with fear, I started working my way back down. The rime gradually thickened. After descending about eighty feet, I got back on reasonably solid ground. I stopped for a long time to let my nerves settle, then leaned back from tools and stared up at the face above, searching for a hint of solid ice, for some variation in the underlying rock strata, for anything that would allow passage over the frosted slabs. I looked until my neck ached, but nothing appeared. The climb as over. The only place to go was down." {John Krakauer, author of Into the Wild, describing his climb on the treacherous mountain of Devil's Thumb.}



Anyone who follows Christ knows the Christian life is a climb, and a difficult one no less. We may climb the same jagged rock several times before we finally overcome it, and even then, we might face a similar expanse only later in our climb. Sometimes we have people climbing with us, often we climb alone (with Christ as our navigator). To even write a comparison about life compared to a mountainous climb proves to be overly cliche, but the analogy works in describing the past year of my life at Crown.

This year has been filled with difficult circumstance: jagged rocks, loose footing, and faulty equipment. But it has also been filled with accomplishment, and actually crossing the divides and gaps.

John Krakauer really gets the metaphor of climbing compared to difficulties in life. The book Into the Wild, although about Chris McCandless' journey to Alaska, reveals a side of the author that is vulnerable and weak. Through expressing weakness, he is then made strong: able to overcome his mountains.

I have not overcome the mountain, but God has helped me to reach the top of this peak! I am so ready to take the next stretch, and I don't think that it is because I see it as easy. It is a challenging stretch, but by reaching the peak I see God's glory above the clouds where I am standing, and their white appearance brushes over my arms as I reach to the sky.

I have faith that can move mountains, but do I have faith that will get me to the top of this one?

My mountain is nothing to the LORD.

"The mountains melt like wax before the LORD/before the Lord of all the earth." {Psalm 97: 5}

Set a flame to my mountain and let the wax pool into the sea. That shall be my prayer. As I climb, the rocks will slip from under my feet, and I will forget they ever existed.