Lessons from river exploration

September 2012 - backdated post in Facebook

I personally consider myself a person of simple faith. When people / leaders ask me to do something, I usually respond and obey without much questioning, though at times I end up doing things which seem ridiculous – eg who in the right state of mind goes mountain climbing / river exploration right after swapping shifts and working for 24 hours? I did not consider it to be much of a challenge in terms of physical fitness compared to Gunung Lambak – although there were some near-misses when I stepped on slippery rocks. Nevertheless, we made it through to the eventual destination: the waterfall.

So here we were standing at the bottom of the waterfall, wading around in a shallow pool of water, when some of the brothers and sisters decided to get a better view higher up by navigating the rock ledges on our right side heading up the waterfall. Initially, I thought it was no big deal to go along as most people in front of me seemed to have navigated it with ease, but as we progressed on, the narrow ledges, slippery surface, the view of the rocks and strong currents below left me frozen with fear on the spot. Thoughts started coming to mind (What if I fall? Will I tumble down from such a height and injure myself? I don’t want to break some bones and get admitted to the very ward I am working in!!!).

Hence, I planned to U-turn back and not risk any further steps forward, only to find a group of people behind me blocking the way, some whose faces appear quite scared as well. So with no other alternative, I decided to move forward - by God’s grace (and some help from more experienced friends), I made it through eventually, greeted by a nicer view deep in the heart of the waterfall and experiencing a nice ‘water massage’ as the stream rushed down the rocks at high speed. Coming back was another challenge though, as my leg cramped and it was more painful navigating the same path I came through earlier.

What did I learn from this experience? I think I got reminded of the verse in Matthew 14:25-32, which speaks of Peter initially taking Jesus at his word and stepping out onto the water in faith, but when he became distracted by the wind, he began to sink. What did Jesus rebuke him? “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” I’m not saying that we blindly do things without thinking, but sometimes we are too smart for our own good. We reason so much about things and circumstances that it hinders us from taking simple steps of faith – think about it, the weather on the day of the trip was forecasted to have thunderstorms (having checked it on 3 separate occasions), but it turned out to be a nice day for hiking. Apart from that, there might probably be various reasons not to go on this trip (eg physical fitness, dangerous terrain etc)

Second thing that I was reminded of was how the decisions we make can encourage spur other people on in ways you could not imagine. The key is the man. Say the people behind you were also fearful of the moving ahead, but by challenging yourself to take that first step, you demonstrated to others that it is possible, it can be done. So let us continue to challenge ourselves to fix our eyes on what is ahead and the eventual result, rather than the current problems and challenges.