William Sloane Coffin
For our last event of the day we were led up a series of steps. As we climbed higher we entered deeper and deeper into the woods. At the top of the stairs there was a wooden platform standing at least twenty feet high. The platform looked awkward against all of the untamed natural beauty surrounding it. This platform leads to a swing that sends you soaring into the trees around it. You cannot experience the rush of swinging through the air surrounded by God's creation without taking the plunge from the platform into thin air, the only thing keeping you from plummeting to the ground below is a cable attached to the harness that you are wearing. I watched as student after student sat on the edge of the platform and eventually fell off of the side to go soaring through the air. The time came for me to climb the log that would bring me to the top. I had decided that if I was going to do this I was going to do this all the way. I wasn't going to sit on the edge and simply fall. I was going to step off of the platform, step into thin air, step into the unknown where my feet cannot hold me, step where I am forced to trust. I received my directions:
"put your hands through the loops and hold onto the rope like this and then you can go." I put my hands through the loops and clenched the rope attached to the cable that I was about to trust with my life.
"Like this?"
"Yes."
"So I can go?"
"Yes."
"I can go whenever?"
"Yes."
"I can just step off of the platform?"
"Yes."
Sometimes taking a step in faith looks a lot like failure at first. I took the risk, I stepped into air, I faced my fear, and I ended up falling just like I was afraid I would. Then I came to the end of my rope. As I reached the end of my rope my harness yanked me out of my free fall and I was soaring, gravity had lost it's hold and I was flying. I could feel the wind rushing past me as I soared through the trees. When I was falling I couldn't exactly undo what I had done and I certainly couldn't quit, but sometimes taking a leap of faith isn't a single step, sometimes it's a series of steps. It often looks like God saying
"Step here my daughter."
"Step here my son."
Only after the step is taken nothing happens, a step that seems so hard to take leads to God saying
"Now step here, and then here, and then here."
All of the sudden we don't know where we are, and something that we thought was going to be a quick leap of faith becomes a journey into the unknown. Now nothing is familiar and we feel lost. There are many different ways to respond to this: maybe we return to what we know, maybe we try to blaze our own trail through the fog, maybe we give up and quit living all together, or maybe we continue to have faith that the God who led us into the midst of this has a plan and will guide us through. I don't know about you guys, but my initial response to feeling lost and alone is to quit and hide under the covers. It's warm in my bed, and I know that I'll be safe. When I've quit, my decisions become about me. Instead of taking the steps that I know that I am supposed to take I seek comfort. Sin that I thought was gone creeps back into my life and before I know it the covers that seemed so safe and warm become a trap as I become entangled in the blankets. I am back to being limited by my weakness, when before my weakness was an opportunity for God to glorify his strength. This has been the last couple of months of my life without me really realizing what was happening. The wonderful thing is that God is always there. He is always calling us back to him, back into a life that is beyond ourselves, a life of looking into the eyes of our savior as he guides each step. It won't be without trial, but it won't be without joy either. Sometimes it looks like waiting, but He is always with us through the waiting and the disbelief. It almost always looks entirely different than we expect, but that's what happens when we step into the unknown, and it's usually above and beyond what we could imagine. He is always with us, and we will always find Him at the end of our rope. We simple need to continue taking each step of faith as He paves the way before us.