Cut the rope

The barley in the field is golden, ripening in the summer sun – which I missed! Three weeks away and the garden is a wilderness of wild weeds, spinach and rhubarb fighting for space.

Awake still at 4 am, jet-lagged and tired, I realised it was still dark. When I left in early July, the sun was up by 4 am. We are sliding into a new season.

Transitions. They can be draining, challenging, scary. Hard. With a different perspective, though, they can be exciting, promising, full of hope.

I heard a story when I was away, part of a sermon. A climber was scaling a mountain. His timing was bad, and darkness began to fall before he’d even reached the summit. Clouds covered moon and stars. The darkness was profound. He could not go down. Unwisely, he decided to feel his way further upwards, and he fell.

Downwards he plummeted until at last, the safety rope round his waist grew tight and arrested his fall. He hung there, suspended in the darkness on the mountain side.

‘Save me, God!’ he cried out. And God answered him. ‘Do you really believe I can save you?’

‘Yes, God, you can save me!’ Again God asked, ‘Do you really believe I can save you?’

‘Yes! Save me!’ Once more, God questioned him. ‘Do you really believe I can?’

‘You can!’

‘OK,’ God said. ‘Cut the rope.’

The poor man clutched the safety rope tighter. He held on. He didn’t cut the rope.

His body was found in the morning, his hands frozen onto the rope.

He was a foot off the ground.

Transitioning to a new season of life can only be exciting, promising and full of hope when my trust is fully in God’s ability to carry me through, to save me in whatever situation I find myself. I can cling ever tighter to thinking I have to do it all, that everything depends on me, and be left dangling, frozen in fear. Or, sensing a changing landscape, I can look up with faith and trust, and cut the rope.

Even for that, I need God’s help.