I once heard it said the Christian life is more like a rock climb than a walk down a path. Following in the footsteps of Christ is not so easy as walking down a path, however narrow it may be. Believers must cling to Truth, the Living Word of God, as they would the face of a mountain. Failure to do so results in falling away.
The Bible is replete in conveying our need for its pervasion of our lives. Moses declared to the Israelites:
Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
Deuteronomy 6:4-9
Like any good simile of the Christian subculture, the rock climb connection convicted and inspired me. At the time, I didn’t realize how poignant it would become. I didn’t know I would be forced to move beyond conviction and inspiration, where the rubber meets the road in action.
We woman are emotional creatures. Wired that way, I’m told. Most of my life, I’ve been (I hate to jump into the mosh pit of post-modernist jargon, but…) relatively unemotional. Maybe it’s a product of growing up with only brothers; but times have changed, I guess. A few weeks ago, I found myself in an emotional blizzard. At least that’s what it felt like for a girl who normally cried once every few months to have uncontrollable crying episodes multiple times a day. Scary. Week-and-a-half scary.
The transition of moving, losing close-knit community, and changing plans isn’t easy, but it’s not that bad. My circumstances were only moderately more difficult. So the blizzard really made no sense. But it felt very real to me. Overwhelmingly real. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I prayed, read my Bible, called family and friends to pray, confessed sin, asked God to reveal hidden sin, sought community –all the things I knew to do weren’t changing the lack of comfort I felt. After all, didn’t God promise “I am He who comforts you” (Isaiah 51:12)? Why wasn’t I feeling comforted?
The rock-climbing analogy kept coming back to me. I didn’t understand the emotional craziness, but I kept hearing the lifeline cling to the Rock, cling to the Rock. When the blizzards would hit, I eventually came to the point where the only way I made it through without becoming completely hysterical was making myself recite a verse –any verse. It wasn’t like flipping a switch or performing a magic trick. I didn’t automatically feel better as soon as I thought of a verse. But it did keep me from falling. I realized I was on the mountain face. The grade was slightly steeper, but the real problem was the blizzards that would blindside me from nowhere. Now, clinging to the Rock didn’t make the blizzard go away, but it was the only way to survive. I had no other refuge. And, really, if I were in a blizzard, I would much rather be holding onto a mountain than wandering aimlessly.
I hope you’ve noticed the dangerous f-words which have infused my writing thus far. Feel. Felt. Feeling. Emotion is tantamount to intense feeling. We women are feelers. [Side note: If one more man tells me feelings are a good thing, it’s likely I’ll punch him in the mouth. I know it’s true; and I’ll even admit that it’s right for him to remind me of that truth. But he should beware the potential physical manifestations of my feelings at the intense point in which they are felt.] God created feelings. They must be good. But they can easily become the faulty foundation by which we live the day-to-day. This is fine, when feelings are supported by the truths of the Word of God. A Puritan articulated this in the beautiful prayer “The Divine Will” from The Valley of Vision: “Help me to honour thee by believing before I feel, for great is the sin if I make feeling a cause of faith.” Feelings, while good, must be constantly compared to Scripture. The Word of God is immutable, feelings are not. This is certainly a mental discipline. It’s much easier to roll with a feeling than consider its biblical validity and stop the thought at its onset. Rolling eventually turns to a spiral of despair. You will not find comfort apart from the Word, Immanuel. I realized, with the help of my brother, my definition of comfort was all about good feelings. The Always-Good-Feelings clause is not part of Christ's Covenant. In fact, He promises we will suffer persecution in following Him. (2 Timothy 3:12) But we can look to that with joy! For the Rock, the beautiful, majestic, steadfast Rock, is our Comfort! The promise of the Living Word, the hope of glory is our Comfort. And that's not a feeling -it's a fact.
So cling to the Living Word, brothers and sisters. Don't give your fellow believers the false hope of good feelings. This life is a difficult, uphill climb. The Rock is your only hope. The only Hope.
