Faith

Back when I was in high school, I went on a church service trip to Annville, Kentucky. We mostly worked on painting projects and simple construction tasks for those who were elderly or had some disability that made these tasks difficult for them to do themselves. One day, however, I was selected to help the local youth director with his weekly adventure outing. This week they were going rock climbing.

Having grown up in West Michigan before the days of indoor rock walls, rock climbing was not something with which I had much experience. Everything was new to me, so the middle schoolers we took out that afternoon delighted in showing me all that was needed in properly putting on a harness, getting the belay in place, connecting to the climbing rope.

After a couple of the local youth scampered up the forty-foot cliff we were climbing with little difficulty, it was my turn. I took considerably longer than they had, but with my long legs and long reach, I found I had some natural advantages that, despite my overall lack of strength, still played in my favor.

As I scrambled over the top of the cliff, coming face to face with the scrawny youth who had been belaying me, I said a prayer of thanks that I had not lost my grip on the way up. Was it truly possible that such a small kid could have kept me from falling had I slipped?

While I was still contemplating the likely pain of such a scenario, the director came over and declared that the two of us were switching places. It was this kid’s turn to climb—and I was the one going to belay him. Since being the one belaying means that you’re responsible to hold the climber from falling to the ground if he or she were to lose their grip, I thought this was a terrible idea. You don’t know who you’re asking, I thought—I have no upper body strength whatsoever… In all of grade school, I recorded a total of one chin up. One. Even though we were tested on them every year. And I think that one was a fluke.

Belaying actually isn’t as hard as it sounds. The rope is wound through the harness in such a way that it doesn’t take much strength at all—you just need to be sure to be holding it in such a way that the natural physics locks up the rope if there’s a sudden tug. The challenge is taking in the rope at just the right amount so that the climber is free to maneuver unencumbered but won’t fall too far if he or she were to slip. You want some slack in the rope, but not too much.

Since we were belaying from the top, I was positioned in such a way that I was staring down over the cliff edge at the climber down below. The climbing rope was wound through a clip in my harness and my harness in turn was tied to a thick tree behind me. In theory, if the climber below me were to fall, my harness tied to the tree would keep me from falling over the cliff edge and I, holding onto the climbing rope wound through the clip in my harness, would keep the climber below me from falling.

What the director didn’t tell me, however, was that he intentionally left some slack in the rope that connected me to the tree behind me. As the climber below me was halfway up the cliff, the director called out to him and suddenly the climber let go and started to fall. My eyes went wide. My heart raced. I pulled back on the rope and held onto it with all my puny might. The slack in the climbing rope quickly went taut and suddenly I found myself skidding along the top of the cliff and over the edge. In a flash, I tried to find somewhere to brace my feet, but there was no real estate left. I thought for a moment of trying to launch myself off the top of the cliff into the top of a tree whose nearest branches were about five feet in front of me. I closed my eyes while getting ready to spring—and came to an abrupt halt, dangling half off the edge of the cliff.

I heard a bit of a laugh behind me. I turned around, and there was another youth standing there. The climbing rope I had been holding onto went through a clip on his harness and he was tied to the same tree I was. He was belaying behind me as an added precaution—in case I let go.

The director came running up. He seemed surprised that I had held onto the rope despite seemingly being launched off the edge of the cliff. “Hey—good job,” he said. “Most people let go.” I’m not sure it ever occurred to me to let go—it certainly wasn’t nobility that had caused me to keep holding on. “But that’s what faith is like,” he continued. “Holding on…even when it seems like everything’s falling apart around you and you’re flying off a cliff.”

Then it occurred to me that everyone else had been in on this act. Apparently, it was some sort of initiation that all the new guys went through. An intense, sort of life-and-death faith lesson. The climber below me grabbed back onto the cliff face and started climbing again as if nothing had happened.

I’m not sure it was the wisest way to teach about faith, but it’s a lesson that’s never left me. And it strikes me that it’s particularly appropriate for today. Faith is holding on, even when it seems like everything’s falling apart around us. And I might take it even one step further—it’s also continuing to support one another, even when it feels like we ourselves are being launched off a cliff.