A BUSHWHACKER’S REFLECTION ON DEVINE DIRECTION

This past summer I’ve been involved in something that I’ve never really done before.  The finishing up of the climbing of the 100 highest mountains in New England involved the climbing of many mountains that have no trails.  The word that is used for this is bushwhacking.  It is an interesting experience to be on your own in the wilderness.  There are numerous obstacles that you encounter.  The first is quite simply getting started in the right place.  Stop to think about it for a moment.  When there is no trail to follow you could start in many different places.  However, the choice of the starting point can be critical to your success.  Heading in the right direction is a second key point.  Interestingly, once having reached the summit, heading down in the right direction becomes even more difficult and more important.  When going up basically you head to the highest spot.  However, when descending you can find yourself going in almost any direction and if you get on a false herd path you can really get lost.  When hiking above the tree line on a clear day, as on Mt. Washington for instance, you can very often make a visual sighting and head in that direction.  However, in the thick cover of trees there is no visual sighting and you must trust your instruments--normally a compass and GPS.  In this area of New England, above 2500 feet the spruce can sometimes be almost impenetrable.  The temptation can be to simply bailout and give up.  It takes a certain amount of determination to keep forging ahead to the summit.

One advantage of climbing alone is the opportunity to reflect on many things without the distraction of conversation.  As I struggled through my last bushwhack and the last hike necessary to complete the 100 highest list, the Lord brought an interesting passage to mind.  In Isaiah 30:20 & 21 we read: “Though the Lord gave you adversity for food and suffering for drink, he will still be with you to teach you.  You will see your teacher with your own eyes.  Your own ears will hear him.  Right behind you a voice will say, ‘this is the way you should go’ whether to the right or to the left.”  I couldn’t help but think how similar the difficulties of this hike were to the struggles we often face in the Christian life.  Many people wander aimlessly through life without any sense of direction.  Difficulties or the lack of them doesn’t mean we’re heading in the right direction.  Our Lord said “I am the way the truth and the life.”  It is vital that we get started at the right place, and unless we get started with the Lord whatever we do in life is a waste of time.  For most of the hike I was unable to see where I was headed.  Also, for a good part of the hike I was not going up so I couldn’t use that instinct to guide me.  What I had to do was trust my GPS.  Before setting out on the bushwhack I took a reading in my GPS on the summit of the mountain I wanted to climb and I followed that reading.  Two things were vital in my no visibility situation: first that my GPS be reliable, by which I mean that it not lose the signal, and secondly that I trust the GPS.  In following our life’s course our spiritual GPS is the Word of God.  We need to know that it is reliable and we need to faithfully follow it.  I have had the experience of being in certain situations where I thought my GPS was off.  It wasn’t, I was.  I was following a herd path that was taking me in the wrong direction.  Other hikers for one reason or another had gone that way.  The GPS indicated that it was the wrong direction, but why not follow the path others had made?  The answer is that to have followed that herd path would have meant that when the path disappeared and it eventually would, I would be totally lost.  I needed to trust my instruments.  This happens so often in life with God’s word.  The temptation is to follow the crowd.  The right thing is to totally trust God’s word.  Also, just as with a bushwhack, when the going gets tough the temptation is to bailout and give up.  It’s at times like these that we need to listen for that voice from the Lord that encourages us with the words: “This is the way you should go. Don’t give up.  Keep moving on.”  As I reached the summit on that last hike I was doubly rewarded.  I not only found the canister attached to the tree with the log book in it which is the goal of every bushwhack but I also saw right on the summit, a humungous black bear, something I had never before seen in all my years of hiking.  The apostle John in the book of Revelation tells us that one day we will meet our Lord and hear him say: “It is finished!  I am the Alpha and the Omega—the beginning and the End.  To all who are thirsty I will give freely from the springs of the water of life.”  What glory that will be!  As I headed back from the summit I was thinking of all the difficulties I had faced going up and wondered if I would be able to finish all I planned to do that day.   Still following my GPS I angled off to my left to see if I could avoid the terrible spruce thicket I had fought my way through on the way up and I suddenly saw something that made my eyes pop out.  It was a dirt road and it was heading exactly where I was going.  I thought I had died and gone to heaven!   The road took me all the way back to the main trail.  As I followed the road that shouldn’t have been there I couldn’t help but think of heaven. I was reminded of the words to the old hymn: “When all my labors and trials are o’er and I am safe on that beautiful shore, just to be near the dear Lord I adore will through the ages be glory for me.”  My final reflection then is this.  As we engage in our earthly bushwhack keep these things in mind.  Get started right.  Follow faithfully the leading of God’s word.  Don’t give up and don’t deviate from the course.  The final reward is coming.  As we read in I John 3:2,3 “Dear friends, we are already God’s children, but he has not yet shown us what we will be like when Christ appears.  But we do know that we will be like him, for we will see him as he really is.  And all who have this eager expectation will keep themselves pure, just as he is pure.”