FACING THE WALL

Job 23:1-27:23; 2 Corinthians 1:12-2:11; Psalm 41:1-13; Proverbs 22:5-6

“I go east, but he is not there. I go west, but I cannot find him. I do not see him in the north, for he is hidden. I look to the south, but he is concealed. But he knows where I am going.”

“It is God who enables us, along with you, to stand firm for Christ. He has commissioned us, and he has identified us as his own by placing the Holy Spirit in our hearts as the first installment that guarantees everything he has promised us.”

“Corrupt people walk a thorny, treacherous road; whoever values life will avoid it. Direct your children onto the right path, and when they are older, they will not leave it.”

My wife and daughter just returned from a ten days’ “girls’ only” hiking/camping trip to the very bottom of the Grand Canyon and out. Fair’s fair: I had the guys for our March ski trip. I was not really worried at all about the girls (although I did not tell them that). They both know their way around a campsite and a trailhead, so I figured that, barring unforeseen car trouble, they’d be fine. Nor did I know my daughter’s home made sterno burner would threaten to torch their campsite along the way. But Dad/husband that I am, once they got home, having made the same hike myself several summers ago, I started to think about all the trails along the cliffs and all the ways they could have gone wrong, and it certainly caused me to stop a moment and not be quite so cavalier about their safe return. They did well because they knew their destination; they followed a very well marked path; they were in good physical condition and well prepared; and they did not do any experimenting with the less known, more dangerous areas. Take away any one of those factors from the equation, though, and the outcome could have been very different. Even given their actions and preparation, one wrong step, and they could have found themselves stuck and stranded in the Canyon, a mile below the surface world. They might have hit the wall and found it insurmountable.

Seldom has any man ever been more stranded or stuck, or hit the wall harder, than Job, and none of it was his fault. Suddenly, his world made no sense. The order and prosperity he knew turned to bitter chaos seemingly at a whim. Nothing was as it had been just a few short weeks earlier. Worse, his self-proclaimed “friends” along the way gave him very conflicting directions and no real comfort. He was alone on a path he’d never walked and on which few ever traveled. He had no map and no effective guide. Worse, he was poured out himself and had little energy and no real enthusiasm for the life ahead. What he wanted was to curl up and die. Job hit the proverbial wall, emotionally and physically.

At some point, life will impact many of us in the same way. Like Job, we have to find our own way out. There are no easy answers, and even God seems far away. Sometimes, there’s no avoiding it. The only way out of adversity is through it. The good news is we may not be as lost as we feel. The bad news is we know exactly where we are, and our prospects just don’t look all that great.

In the Grand Canyon, that place really is known as “The Wall,” and my wife has now overcome it twice. After hiking six miles or so up the Bright Angel trail (a taxing effort in itself) from its Colorado River bottom, one comes face to face with a literal wall of granite. The name fits. The Wall is a vertical cliff rising over a half mile above its base, straight up. From the bottom, the path up it is completely invisible in places and seemingly unattainable in others. But it’s the only way out. Routinely, hikers can be found sprawled beside and even in the path, overwhelmed at just the thought of ascending its heights back to the South Rim. In fact, the toughest thing about The Wall is not the sheer physical effort one must muster to conquer it. Its hidden difficulty lies in its psychology. As with many of life’s journeys, The Wall epitomizes a fundamental truth: getting down is relatively easy. Getting up and out is another thing entirely. Coming down is scenic, fun, even exciting. Getting back up is taxing, sweaty work. It requires persistence and a positive attitude which for many by that point has been severely depleted. The thing is, though, that there is only one choice if one ever expects to escape the confines of the Canyon. If you want out, you have to go up.

Whatever the cause, most of us will face a time when the only choices we face are difficult, and the way out seems the hardest of all. At that juncture, we have to remember what we know. We need to keep our heads and eyes up. When I was on the Bright Angel facing The Wall in the dead of summer several years ago, conventional wisdom was to not look up and just put one foot in front of the other until you got to the top. Look down, so you did not have to confront how much higher you still had to go. I think that, in effect, was the advice Job’s “friends” gave him, and it was exactly the wrong instruction. What saved Job is what got me up The Wall. Looking up, I could see the blue sky and the beauty of the view. I remembered my goal, the magnificence and rest life at the top held in store. Sure, if I considered the path alone, it looked pretty discouraging. But every path has an end, and when I saw the path as the means to that magnificent end, it made the journey easier, because it brought out a strength and courage I did not know I had.

Job held on with a relentless insistence on just one more audience with God. He wanted to clear his name, but more than that, it seems he just wanted to hear once more that he was loved. He desperately needed to know his suffering was not in vain, that God knew and that God cared. His friends encouraged him to keep his head down. Job knew a better way, however difficult the path. Look up. Keep focused on the magnificence at the end of the journey.