"When the Trail Gets Steep"

     Dear Friends in Christ,  

   As many of you know, Marilyn and I left 3 weeks ago today for a vacation that would take us to an area we’d never been before, a rather desolate and desert-like region tucked away in the southeastern part of the state of Utah where there are 2 national parks known as Arches National Park and Canyonlands.  Though the area was very dry and sandy, it was definitely beautiful in its own right.  The landscape was decorated with unusual rock formations called arches as you can see from these pictures, and fins which are long thin sections of rocks, and needles which are spires of rock that are often packed closely together.  We even found this unusual formation called Balanced Rock.  As we drove and hiked our way through this area that was so different than any we’d ever been to before, we talked several times about how the landscape just screamed of some cataclysmic event that took place years ago to cause all of these unusual formations.  We knew that that event was the great Flood of Noah’s day.  And though the National Parks Services made it very clear in their signs and literature that all this unusual scenery was caused by water, we were saddened but not surprised by the fact that they took the evolutionary side of it and said that it all happened some 200 million years ago, thus completely leaving God and the biblical record out of the picture.

   Well, while we were on this trip there were 2 terms that we learned that will come into play with what I will be talking about this morning.  One term was positive and the other negative – very negative.  The positive term was spelled c-a-i-r-n but pronounced carn.  A cairn is defined on the Internet’s Wikipedia web site as “a human-made pile of stones, often in conical form.”  And that’s exactly what they are.  (Show pictures)  Now we had run into these before in Glacier National Park, but we had no idea what they were.  In fact, we finally decided they must have had some sort of spiritual significance for the ancient Indians who once inhabited the area, but we were wrong.  Cairns are simply trail markers.  Since the trails, especially in the areas that we were in, were not always real visible because of rock pathways and shifting sands, the cairns were placed on the trails by the parks services to let you know where you needed to go.

   The negative term that we learned on our vacation that we’d never heard before but that we became very familiar with was scrambling.  One definition that I came across on the Internet says that scrambling “lies somewhere within the realm of rock climbing but without the need for any specialist equipment and it just involves the use of your hands as well as your feet to make an ascent.”

   So with those 2 words in mind, let me share with you what happened on the Wednesday of our vacation as we hiked a trail called the Syncline Loop and the spiritual lessons that God drove deep into my heart on this hike.  According to the book we had, this was to be an 8.0 mile hike that began with a steep 1300 foot descent into this canyon (show picture).  We navigated that just fine though it was pretty hard on the legs and eventually found ourselves on the floor of the canyon.  For about 2 miles we enjoyed walking on fairly level ground in a very beautiful area that was decorated with desert shrubs and flowers.  Eventually though we had to climb up out of that canyon.  And at one point while we were doing that, we ran into a group of young hikers who were taking the loop the opposite direction of what we were.  So I told them about the steep ascent they were going to have to make out of the canyon near the trail’s end.  To which one of them replied, “Well, you’ve got some scrambling ahead of you.”  Now remember, Marilyn and I had never heard that term before in relation to hiking so we thought he just meant that we were going to have a similar steep climb out of the canyon, no different than what they were facing.  But that’s not what it turned out to be. 

   As we got closer and closer to the edge of the canyon, the trail got steeper and steeper.  And we were doing fine until all of a sudden the trail disappeared and all we could see above us were cairns marking where we needed to go on this steep rock wall that we were now a part of.  Now some of you are probably thinking, “Well, why didn’t you just turn around at that point?”  Needless to say, that entered our minds, but by that time we were so high up and the trail was so steep that had we turned around we would have been looking straight down hundreds of feet into this canyon and would have had to climb down with that view in front of us.  So we dismissed that idea pretty quickly and decided to go forward, or I guess I should say upward.  At this point our hiking sticks were absolutely useless to us and we were climbing this rock wall using only hand holds and foot holds and I was thinking, to borrow the words of the old comedy team Laurel and Hardy, “This is a fine mess we’ve gotten ourselves into!”  Though Marilyn never looked down, I did as I was helping her up this very steep wall and it became quickly apparent to me that if either one of us slipped, there would be nothing to catch us and our life on this earth would be over rather quickly because there were hundreds of feet separating us from the canyon floor.  Now even as I say that, I must also add that I had an incredible sense of peace this whole time, in spite of my deathly fear of heights.  And though Marilyn was quite apprehensive and fearful about what we were doing, somehow I was able to remain calm and lead her up that rock wall to a much safer place.  Now, I know where that sense of peace came from.  It’s certainly not something I somehow conjured up on my own.  Rather, it came from the One who promises peace and strength when we need it the most.  And there’s no doubt about it.  I needed it then more than any other time in my life.  It was a supernatural peace, a peace that the Bible describes as the peace that passes all understanding.  In other words, it’s a peace that you shouldn’t have, considering the circumstances, but it’s a peace that you do have because it comes from him who is the Prince of Peace.

   Well, eventually we made it off that rock wall and out of that canyon after a few more treacherous spots that Marilyn remembers better than I, but our problems were not finished yet.  Before I get to those though I want to state the 1^st major lesson that God taught me on this hike and that is to read and heed the warning signs.  You see, prior to taking this hike I had taken this picture of the sign that marked this trail.  The only problem is, I didn’t read the sign.  I did, however, later on that night when I was looking at the pictures on my camera.  Let me read it to you now… 

   Had we read that sign, there’s a pretty good possibility we might not have taken this trail, or at the very least we would have been much more alert to what lay ahead of us.  But we didn’t read and therefore did not heed the sign.  And oh how true that is of so many people in our world today.  God posts warning signs throughout the Bible.  Those warning signs come in so many different forms: the 10 Commandments which tell us the paths that God wants us to follow and the paths he wants us to avoid in our everyday lives.  Then he provides examples in the Bible of what happens to people when they ignore his warning signs and choose to do their own thing instead: the people of Noah’s day who refused to abandon their wicked ways in spite of Noah’s preaching to them the entire 120 years he was building the ark; the Israelites who were warned of God’s judgment that would befall them if they rejected him and chose to worship the false gods of the nations around them.  God includes other warning signs in the Bible that come in the form of passages that declare to us that “the wages of sin is death” and “the soul that sins, it shall die.”  He provides graphic descriptions of hell in the Bible to warn people of the eternal punishment that awaits those who refuse his invitation to salvation through Christ.

   But sadly, so many people today pay no heed to those warning signs.  They live their lives only for themselves.  They choose to do their own thing and go their own way.  They don’t open their Bibles.  They don’t connect with God through prayer.  Church is just one of many options for them that they pick and choose from on Sunday morning rather than the necessity that God intended it to be.

   But that takes us to the next part of our hike where in spite of the fact that we had failed to read and heed the warning signs, God still gave us signs of his presence.  He didn’t abandon us.  He didn’t forget about us.  He didn’t give up on us.  And those signs came in the form of beautiful flowers that decorated our path (show pictures).  Every time I saw one of those flowers after all we’d been through on this difficult, desolate, and dangerous hike – flowers that I felt should not have been there because of the harsh hot desert climate – I saw them as a sign from God that he was still with us and still able to bring beauty into the wilderness setting we found ourselves in.

   And doesn’t he do the same with us in our everyday life which often times feels like a wilderness as we find ourselves burdened by worries and concerns, diseases and decisions, heartaches and hurts.  The flowers that God sends our way come in so many forms: a friend who offers an encouraging word just when we need it the most; an advisor who gives us wise and godly counsel concerning a decision we’re needing to make; a spouse who senses our stress and has supper ready or the house cleaned or the lawn mowed as a surprise gift when we come home.  Make no mistake about it, my friends.  God works in people and through people to make his presence known and felt in our lives.

   But the greatest way in which he manifests his presence to us involved the final part of our hike.  As I mentioned before, according to the book we had, this trail was to be an 8.0 mile loop.  We had carefully followed all the cairns and I felt that we were getting close to the end of the trail.  But with every hill I crested, all I could see in front of me was more canyon and more rock formations with no sign that we were getting near the end.  I was beginning to wonder whether we had gotten off onto a wrong path.  And with our water running low and Marilyn feeling light-headed and the sun beating down on us, my worries intensified even more when my GPS watch showed that we had already hiked 8 miles with no sign of an exit.  So finally, after 8.2 miles I looked at the trail in the book one more time and saw that it was a self-contained loop with no other trails branching off from it.  So I told Marilyn that we needed to continue to follow the cairns that had been so faithful in marking our path up to that point and hopefully they would get us to the end.  Well, about a tenth of a mile later the trail took a steep ascent and when I made it to the top of that ascent, here’s what I saw (show picture of parking lot).  Talk about relief!  Talk about joy!  Talk about hallelujahs and prayers of thanksgiving!  Never has it felt so good to finish a hike after all we’d been through.

   And you know what, my friends?  I believe we will experience that same joy, that same relief, that same elation when our journey through this life is over.  For then we will arrive, not at a parking lot, but at the threshold of heaven where we will be greeted by loved ones and friends who have preceded us there, including the best Friend we could ever have, a Friend named Jesus.  In fact, speaking of Jesus, did you spot him in this experience that I’ve shared with you today?  Sure he was with us on that rock wall when one slip could have cost us our lives.  Sure he was with us giving us strength to continue on in spite of the hot desert sun.  Sure he was with us in the occasional desert flowers that decorated our path.  But more than all of those things, Jesus was with us in the cairns that led our way through that canyon.  Though the journey got tough at times, though the trail got steep, though at times we felt lost, we followed those cairns and they got us to our ultimate destination.  Likewise, though our journey through life gets tough at times, though the trail gets steep, though at times we feel lost and uncertain, frightened and concerned, if we follow Jesus, if we keep our eyes fixed on him and our faith firmly anchored in him, this One who loved us enough to die for us, this One who declared himself to be the way, the truth, and the life will get us to our ultimate destination.  He will get us safely home. 

      Amen.