GO FOR IT

DAY 67:  Our family loves adventure; the more action the better.  So when we had a chance to take our young family to family camp we were all in.  Like most family camps it offered the standard, shuffleboard and volleyball; but what excited our family was the high ropes course - that is until we got a look at it.

At that point, our seven-year-old daughter began listing out her reservations.  As I looked up to the top of the 30-foot pole the guide wanted my baby girl to climb, I could feel the reservations welling up in me, too.  The objective was to climb this very tall telephone pole, figure out a way to stand on the tippy-top without falling off, and then leap about eight feet into thin air to try to grasp a trapeze bar.  For dramatic effect, the decking below was painted with a bull’s eye.  It was very intimidating!  Many of the adults passed on the opportunity, but I could see that Hannah wanted to try yet lacked the courage. 

Logically, I knew that she would have a safety harness and there would be no way for her to get hurt... but emotionally it seemed like a huge risk.  With real anxiety, Hannah looked to me for her signal about what she should do. 

"Go for it!" I told her. "You will be secure in the harness, so just do your part and you will make it to the top.  You can do it, Hannah!  I know you can!"

Bolstered by my confidence, she began the climb.  As I cheered her on from the ground she made it up the pole rapidly.  Then came the challenging part.  As as she maneuvered to keep her balance while trying to stand on the top with no support to hold on to, she felt the pole wobble.  Hugging it tightly, she called down, “I think this is good. Can I climb down now?”

My maternal instincts should have been sounding warning bells.  “My baby is on top of a telephone pole!  Call the fire department!”  But instead they were saying, “She can do it.”

So I challenged her more.  "I believe you can do it.  You are strong and you have a safety harness.  Go for it!  Come on.  I promise, you'll be glad you did.”

Her older brother was standing beside me and said under his breath, "Oh no, she's gonna die." A quick pinch on his arm let him know that his comments were definitely not helpful.  He said nothing else and thankfully she had not heard him. 

Atop the pole I could see the look of resolve cross her face.  She would do it or fall off trying.  With incredible balance she planted one foot on top and then the other until she was squatting like a duck on that 12 inch diameter. Then, ever so carefully she gathered her balance and stood erect.  She had no idea that was the easy part.  Now, she had to convince herself to go against natural instincts and jump into thin air, trusting the safety rope to save her.

“Oh no! Not me,” she declared from her high perch.

“You might as well go for it,” I called back.  “It’s the only way down.”

After a short conversation with herself, she counted to three, closed her eyes and dived into the air.  As the crowd cheered once again, she flapped her arms like a bird until she was safely on the platform below. The trapeze was not the goal; having the courage to leap was the real test.  

This whole incident came flooding back to my mind as I read about Israel finally making it to the land God had promised to give them.  It was the exciting adventure they had been waiting for.  Step one was to scout out the land, so Moses sent 12 men to secretly explore the territory and come back with a full report. 

 ^{Numbers 13:25} After exploring the land for forty days, the men returned ^{. . .  27} This was their report to Moses: “We entered the land you sent us to explore, and it is indeed a bountiful country—a land flowing with milk and honey. Here is the kind of fruit it produces. ²⁸ But the people living there are powerful, and their towns are large and fortified. We even saw giants there, the descendants of Anak!

The land seemed to be all that God promised it would be... and more... but the more was scary.  As the people heard that there might be obstacles, fear began to take hold.  But not everyone was focused on the challenges.

 ³⁰ But Caleb tried to quiet the people as they stood before Moses. “Let’s go at once to take the land,” he said. “We can certainly conquer it!”

Caleb's was the voice of faith that remembered that no matter what they faced, they had a safety harness because God had already promised to give them the land.  But his voice was drowned out.

 ³¹ But the other men who had explored the land with him disagreed. “We can’t go up against them! They are stronger than we are!” ³² So they spread this bad report about the land among the Israelites: “The land we traveled through and explored will devour anyone who goes to live there. All the people we saw were huge. ³³ We even saw giants^[b] there, the descendants of Anak. Next to them we felt like grasshoppers, and that’s what they thought, too!” 

The majority sounded just like my son, "Oh man, she's gonna die!"  They were definite in their opinion: "We can't go up against them!"  Their focus was not on the bigness of what God had said or what God could do, but on their smallness: We felt like grasshoppers!  The people only heard the majority's voice of the fear and not the voice of Caleb's faith.  And so, they refused to go forward.

I am reminded by this story the importance of surrounding myself with people who believe God and whose voices are full of faith.  Those who believe God remember that He is the safety harness. He can do things mere grasshoppers cannot. He will never abandon those who follow Him. His strength overcomes our weakness. When difficulties and challenges come, those who proclaim such things are the voices I need to hear - and sometimes others need to hear those truths from me.

Perhaps we are grasshoppers, but God is not.  We will never know His power and security until we climb to the top, go into the land, or face those giants.  Those who tell us we can't need a good pinch!

Day 67 of 365
Numbers 11:24-35
Numbers 12
Numbers 13
Mark 14:22-52
Psalm 52:1-9
Proverbs 11:1-3

 

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