It’s a wierd feeling looking down on the clouds.
500 feet earlier the view was very different. Looking down, I saw mud underneath my boots and streams of water pouring across my feet. The path looked more like a riverbed than a hiking path. Mere feet from a drop off, I stayed close to the rocky edge. Due to the clouds, I couldn’t see whether the drop off was 5 feet or 5000; either way, I wasn’t going to take my chances.
Breathing heavily from the lack of oxygen, it was father to return to the previous hostel ten miles back than to continue upward.
The path rose sharply and I was forced to use all fours to maintain balance. Plunging my hand into the stream of water to grip the rocks underneath, I slowly pulled myself and my 60 liter backpack up the rocky path.
Amidst the torrential monsoon rains I asked myself “why in the world are you doing this Michael?” I hadn’t been dry for 3 days now and my waterproof boots were feeling the effects of having trekked 40 miles already and were leaking badly. “I’m doing this for Jesus, to spread the gospel, to bring kingdom” were all really pathetic reasons in my mind at this point. The Himalayas made the Appalachians look like molehills and I knew I was in way over my head. I couldn’t stop because I would lose vital body heat but I was too exhausted to continue the climb.
Doubts flooded my mind. The previous day, our host had asked us to pray for a fellow believer whose family was struggling with health issues, and I was so exhausted that (I’m ashamed to admit this) I could not have cared less about that man or his health in that moment.
I stopped for a moment, the water streaming down my face, and asked myself a different ‘why’. “Why? This is physical but that was spiritual. Why did my physical condition have any affect on my spiritual life?”
I knew that my spiritual and physical bodies were not two separate entities and are tied together, but still, I felt like there was something to be learned or clarified.
As I continued climbing, hiking, scrambling, sliding, and falling my way up the mountain, I was barely able to see 50 feet in front of me because the clouds were so thick. The rain slowed; not because it stopped raining but because I was beginning to rise above the clouds. Slowly it began to clear and I clearly saw the path all the way to the peak.
With renewed vigor, I scurried to the top.
It was the weirdest and most breathtaking moment of my life (literally, I felt like I was gonna pass out). I could see mountain peaks as far as my eye could see and the sky above was nearly cloudless, but everything below me was hidden by the storm clouds below. Stretching out as far as I could see, the clouds looked like a gray blanket concealing the thousands of feet I had just traversed.
A few days later, after we had reached our ministry host’s home, that question had morphed into a slightly different question: “Should physical situations affect our spiritual life”? If anyone could say “yes” to that question, it was me. After cleaning up the diarrhea aftermath of the 5th time of missing the hole in the squatty potty, I had ample reason to be disgusted. With flys, spiders, and mystery bugs dive bombing our faces while we slept, being confined to the house cause of the rains, and the diarrhea/squatty potty incident, we all could have been grumpy and frustrated with each other.
Despite all of this, however, our joy remained. We laughed about the bugs, joked about the squatty pottys, and shared Cipro when the diarrhea hit. It doesn’t make logical sense how we could have such joy and unity, but we did. Having none of the normal comforts of home, our joy couldn’t be based in anything except Jesus.
Our joy came from our relationship with Jesus and transcended our physical situations. While I would prefer to wait a very very long time before doing that trek again, I needed to be reminded that my joy should not come from anything except from Him. Material things will come and go, situations will come and go, but He is constant, and thus, my Joy is constant.
It’s not just joy, but a sense of peace comes from this. When I stood on top of that mountain and looked back at the trail behind me, that ridge that seemed insurmountable and that mud pit that I got stuck in were mere blips in the entire trek.
As I looked backward then looked forward, I saw past obstacles as well as future struggles, but I also saw the next peak, and the next after that and in the grand scheme of the Himalayas, the struggles I had and would face paled in comparison to the grandeur of the entire adventure.
Life is an adventure. Unfortunately, millions of people have never been to the peak, both believers and unsaved. Those who are unable to rise above and see life as this incredible, exciting adventure are forced to live life obstacle to obstacle, paycheck to paycheck, relationship to relationship.
A life walking with Jesus means a life of rising above. A life of peace and joy that comes from rising above the obstacles and the clouds and seeing this life and world from His eyes.
“And the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.”
