What to keep? What to throw away?
As a younger and much stronger man, I once set out to hike the Appalachian Trail. The trail runs over 2000 miles from Georgia to Maine along the spine of the Appalachians, and every year hundreds of hikers will set off from Georgia's Springer Mountain with high hopes and backpacks brimming with shiny new gear.
In the first miles of my own hike I was amazed to see articles of that shiny gear begin to show up abandoned at trail side. The first thing I saw was a nearly brand new wool sweater neatly folded and left beside the trail by some previous hiker. Folded! This wasn't left by accident! Then, as the days passed, we seemed to find a steady inventory of pricey, or simply heavy, items simply left behind at trail shelters: an elaborate butane stove, tents, canned food, articles of clothing, and even a very expensive and pristine pair of high top leather basketball shoes in my size!
It became fairly obvious what was going on. This was simply excess weight jettisoned by other hikers after the briefest experience with the unyielding nature of the mountains. Weight x Incline x Mileage = Exhaustion. It seems that the gear that had seemed so utterly necessary while perusing backpacking catalogs by the fireplace in January proved to be just no more than a useless, heavy burden once the boots hit the trail. It's an expensive lesson for novice hikers to learn, but they only have to learn it once. Just a few days into an extended trek, a hiker will have come to understand the true meaning of "essential."
What a perfect analogy for the first steps of a new Christian's walk with Christ. During our pre-Christian lives we accumulate all manner of dead weight - bad habits, unhealthy relationships, obsessions, addictions, possessions, resentments, prejudices - the list goes on. I'm guessing that of the learning process is coming to understand the true meaning of what is essential in this brand new trek on which we're embarking.
These days I feel much like those novice hikers. I'm excited about the trail ahead, eager to experience every bend along the way - every breathtaking vista. But I'm also having to begin the process of deciding what's an essential and what's dead weight to be jettisoned.
Some things I've found surprisingly easy to let go off, others less so, and still others I find disturbingly difficult to shed. And, there are those things to which I find myself tenaciously clinging to even as they hinder my forward progress.
But, eventually all the useless "gear" will have to go. This isn't the soft, downhill stroll I was on before. Now the way has grown steep, the path difficult, and the weather unpredictable. To walk it will mean laying the dead weight - some of it dearly held - beside the path and moving on. Trails end, I'm told, is well worth it!
(P.S. While on on this backpacking analogy, let me throw in something else that just occurred to me. At the end of a long day of hiking with a fully load backpack (even one with the excess removed) you experience an odd sense of lightness when you finally shed the pack for the night. It's suddenly as though you could jump ten feet strait up. It's a very pleasant, albeit short-lived, sensation.
Well, can you imagine the sense of lightness we'll feel when we finally shed of our physical bodies and earthly burdens upon arrival in heaven?! )
As a younger and much stronger man, I once set out to hike the Appalachian Trail. The trail runs over 2000 miles from Georgia to Maine along the spine of the Appalachians, and every year hundreds of hikers will set off from Georgia's Springer Mountain with high hopes and backpacks brimming with shiny new gear.
In the first miles of my own hike I was amazed to see articles of that shiny gear begin to show up abandoned at trail side. The first thing I saw was a nearly brand new wool sweater neatly folded and left beside the trail by some previous hiker. Folded! This wasn't left by accident! Then, as the days passed, we seemed to find a steady inventory of pricey, or simply heavy, items simply left behind at trail shelters: an elaborate butane stove, tents, canned food, articles of clothing, and even a very expensive and pristine pair of high top leather basketball shoes in my size!
It became fairly obvious what was going on. This was simply excess weight jettisoned by other hikers after the briefest experience with the unyielding nature of the mountains. Weight x Incline x Mileage = Exhaustion. It seems that the gear that had seemed so utterly necessary while perusing backpacking catalogs by the fireplace in January proved to be just no more than a useless, heavy burden once the boots hit the trail. It's an expensive lesson for novice hikers to learn, but they only have to learn it once. Just a few days into an extended trek, a hiker will have come to understand the true meaning of "essential."
What a perfect analogy for the first steps of a new Christian's walk with Christ. During our pre-Christian lives we accumulate all manner of dead weight - bad habits, unhealthy relationships, obsessions, addictions, possessions, resentments, prejudices - the list goes on. I'm guessing that of the learning process is coming to understand the true meaning of what is essential in this brand new trek on which we're embarking.
These days I feel much like those novice hikers. I'm excited about the trail ahead, eager to experience every bend along the way - every breathtaking vista. But I'm also having to begin the process of deciding what's an essential and what's dead weight to be jettisoned.
Some things I've found surprisingly easy to let go off, others less so, and still others I find disturbingly difficult to shed. And, there are those things to which I find myself tenaciously clinging to even as they hinder my forward progress.
But, eventually all the useless "gear" will have to go. This isn't the soft, downhill stroll I was on before. Now the way has grown steep, the path difficult, and the weather unpredictable. To walk it will mean laying the dead weight - some of it dearly held - beside the path and moving on. Trails end, I'm told, is well worth it!
(P.S. While on on this backpacking analogy, let me throw in something else that just occurred to me. At the end of a long day of hiking with a fully load backpack (even one with the excess removed) you experience an odd sense of lightness when you finally shed the pack for the night. It's suddenly as though you could jump ten feet strait up. It's a very pleasant, albeit short-lived, sensation.
Well, can you imagine the sense of lightness we'll feel when we finally shed of our physical bodies and earthly burdens upon arrival in heaven?! )
