A couple of nights ago I had actually prayed for direction in my talk and asked for inspiration in my dreams. It was a super random and direct prayer and I've never asked for a dream answer before. I don't know if I fully believed in my own prayer.
I did have a dream that night though. A vivid one, too. I dreamed that I was rock climbing. I have no idea who was belaying me. I had gotten up near to the top and I was exhausted and lost as to where my next step was. And then a girl came along. I was excited, thinking I could ask for her assistance and direction, and instead she came over, cut my rope, and laughed at me before stealthily sneaking down the rock. She left me with a haunting, "Good luck getting down now."
I was TERRIFIED. I was so weak. I had no idea where to go. If I moved it was likely sudden death because I'd fall and there would be no rope to catch me but instead a pile of rocks at the bottom of a pit hundreds of feet down.
I woke up from the dream after reaching a hesitant hand up and missing what I thought had been a handhold. My dream self and real self were both shaking. And later that day, I remembered I had prayed for inspiration, and I thought, what the heck?! That was awful. You want me to talk about not chopping other people's ropes? Not climbing walls for risk of dying?
But tonight I interpretted it (pretty proud of myself...haha) differently. What if the risk of death at the bottom of the pit had been removed...... and I had fallen? And I met the person who had been my belay? And it was Jesus?
What if this just became a super awesome life analogy?
We are all here on earth climbing the massive rock wall of life. And every time we try to climb on our own, we fall. We can go a ways up, but we become weak. We misjudge. We are tricked. Someone blocks our path. We take a dangerous road, and the result is failure. We fall, but we don't die. We land at the bottom where Jesus is still holding our ropes, waiting for us to come back. He picks us up gently, wipes the dust away and pleads with us to try again. But to trust him. He's saved us from death - why the free fall and our mistakes don't kill us - but to make it home to our shared Father in Heaven, we have to climb. And Jesus knows the way. And wants to hold our ropes and coach us past the difficult parts and tug us to the next step when we've given our best efforts and our own strength fails us.
He asks us to make bigger reaches. To find what would be impossible holds in free climb. But he promises never to let go of the rope. If we trust him, we will make it. We'll see our progress and we'll keep going. But if we forget about the man holding our ropes and think we're too good for his coaching, it's impossible not to fall.
And if this happens, we absolutely NEED to fall. Sometimes all the way to the bottom. To reattach ourselves to the one man who knows the way and who can lead us home. And until we trust him and believe in his ultimate example, we will exhaust our strengths again and again and we will fall.
If we let Jesus Christ be the master of our ropes, we are our own examples of believers.
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