Up High

Some musical background for you to read by. 🙂

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3gZFFC-K8w

The mountain winds, like the dew and rain, sunshine and snow, are measured and bestowed with love on the forests to develop their strength and beauty. –John Muir

Sitting in the office chair a few weeks ago, I read the letters on the wall as best as I could, and the eye doctor drug that harsh beam of light across my eyes. Seven years ago, he had done the same and exclaimed as he lit up my left eye, that something was wrong. I would need to hurry to the city for more tests and begin a process that he warned could reveal a serious muscular disease. But that was not to be and after weeks and months of effort, tests and appointments, the disease was not found. My life went on with good sight and good health in spite of his pronouncements. How unpleasantly familiar when he, after all these years, began to exclaim as he looked into my left eye, that something, again, was terribly wrong.

“This doesn’t look good. You will need to get more tests. You have a big problem.” He seemed too excited, like a doctor who lived for optical action but hardly ever got any. His emotion, both, humored me and frightened me. He described the dangers he felt I faced until I wanted to run from the office…run from the waves of adrenalin flowing through me like liquid fear, making me feel lightheaded and weak-kneed. I wished to get away from him, order my glasses, go home to my room and close the door. Maybe I could shut my eyes and shut out the fear—shut out the blustery breath of fear wantonly whispering what might happen to me. But, instead, I was to take the paperwork that explained the list of tests I needed and leave the office for an ER. The diagnosis meant that I could lose the sight in my eye, or worse, lose my health or my life if the blown vessels were the start of more to come.

Soon I was walking up to an ER, trying hard to find and preserve my heart’s peace, to “be still and know that He is God”. Near the large glass doors, I could hear a man cursing loudly, could see him pacing and shouting obscenities. He continued as I walked by him and as I softly spoke to the young attendant just inside, the man pushed up too close behind me letting out a long, grotesque growl, as if blowing up from a dank, dark cave instead of the precious lungs of a man. I’ve been blown by this kind of wind before. It had blown me into the fear, and into this ER and was quaking away the repose I wished I had. It can be fierce, and when its fearful gales blow up, the comforts of peace seem far, far away.

I sat in a row of chairs as the tormented man circled round them, out of his mind, complaining and cursing, charging the atmosphere in the room with his delusion and intimidation. He stepped outside and angrily beat the trash can along the wall with a stick before coming back in to circle my row some more. It was the same story inside of me; fear rising–circling around my peace, demanding I fear, demanding intimidation, commanding my dread for what the doctor had said. I wanted to take it back–demand the man be still, be set free and back in his right mind safe from the drugs–from the demons. I wanted to demand my heart be still, too, and to rest in God, to trust him in the crisis, trust him with the diagnosis, but instead I sat dominated by it all.

Soon a violent windstorm came up, and the waves were breaking over the boat…
“Teacher, don’t You care that we are perishing?” Jesus rebuked the wind and the sea. “Silence!” he commanded. “Be still!”
“Why are you so afraid?” He asked. “Do you still have no faith?” Mark 4:37-40

A couple of years ago, I read that the naturalist and writer, John Muir, climbed to the top of a Douglas spruce in a mountain grove during a California wind storm. He reveled in the wind and chose the path up when storms came to push him around–push him inside. And tree tops have drawn me up my entire life; struggling to the first limb, then scaling the rest to the height—as a child the young hickory by the field offered low limbs to 10-year-olds. And the oak tree whose lowest branch was out of reach from the ground could be scaled when crossing over to it from the hickory branches. Up high I could see all there was to see. When I held on at the very top, I was not afraid. I knew the tree would also hold me.

In the ER, the raging man was finally taken away and as the winds died down the doctor explained the diagnosis seemed wrong for me, the danger of death suddenly erased with his words and my opportunity to climb up during the storm dissipated into the evening. I thought of John Muir again, on the drive home. I had often thought of his climb during my own life’s storms these past two years. I imagined his ecstasy and exhilaration at being high as the winds whipped and twisted the tree tops. I could have climbed up where the promises of God reside, held on tight and let it blow, instead of cowering down low, harassed on the ground. But there will be another day, another chance to practice this path upwards, and I am going to try again– to face my storms up high….with Christ.

• Consider it pure joy, my brothers, when you encounter trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Allow perseverance to finish its work, so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. James 1:2-4

And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus. Ephesians 2:6
(Up where we can see above storms)

John Muir – A Wind-Storm in the Forests | Genius