What’s Your Everest? Blind Descent DevotionalSample

Day 4: Resilience

I love the way Isaiah 40:31 describes our ability to rise above life’s obstacles by trusting in God. We encounter daily distractions and difficulties. Relying on ourselves and others may get us through temporarily, but it’s only through His strength that we will overcome the greatest obstacles of this world.

Mount Everest contains every type of obstacle imaginable in high altitude mountaineering. To name a few: there are the logistics of planning equipment issues, and climbing partners; physical obstacles like the Khumbu Ice Fall, Lhotse Face, and the death zone; weather and altitude. As a climber, I train for the things that I can control and to be prepared to respond to the things outside of my control, which happen often in mountaineering.

Let’s describe some of the physical obstacles. The Khumbu Ice Fall is arguably the most dangerous area on the mountain and it’s the first major obstacle out of basecamp. It’s a couple miles of flowing, building-sized blocks of ice called seracs. It shifts and changes daily, so each time we went through, the route was different. This is where you see the cheap aluminum ladders tied together in which we must cross wearing crampons (the spikes on our boots). Avalanches kick off without notice and there’s really nowhere to run. And at that altitude you can’t really run even if you wanted to.

Out of Camp II at 21,000 feet, the route heads up Lhotse Face. Lhotse is the fourth highest mountain in the world, which we climb straight up a couple miles on its treacherous ice and rock face to reach Everest’s high camp. Halfway up Lhotse Face is Camp III at 23,000 feet, where we carve out a small shelf in the ice to anchor our tents. One slip at that camp and i'ts game over as you’d fall for almost a mile straight down to the Western Cwm (pronounced /coom'/, Welsh for 'valley') below.

The South Col is located at 26,000 feet.,This is the death zone. Up there, there’s only one-third of the air that exists at sea-level. You can’t survive long in the death zone, hence the name, so you have to reduce your exposure. In fact, if you cut your finger it won’t heal. There’s just not enough air to survive and your body is quickly breaking down and essentially dying.

With each obstacle we have the choice of fight or flight. It would be a lot easier to turn around and have gravity on our side to descend to safety. Living at altitude is far from glorious. It’s a suffer fest and it takes everything you have to figure out a reason to take one more step forward. But eventually—if you can get out of your mind and push through with continued resilience—you’ll take those final steps and reach the top of the world.

Jesus Christ walked this Earth for a short time to witness to the world and die for our sins. 1 John 5:4 reminds us that we don’t need to carry the heavy loads the Earth weighs on us. We must turn to Him, release the burden to Jesus. He’s already conquered the world and through Him we will also overcome the world.

Discussion Questions:

Describe a time that Jesus helped you overcome an obstacle.

What load are you carrying right now that you need to release to Jesus?