Climbing the mountain

A couple of days ago, Tob, Hez, Cam and I decided that it would be good to drive up to the top of the mountain to pray. There’s been some heavy stuff going on here lately and we felt like we needed to do something a little bit different and focussed. We spent the day fasting and all met together at our place in the brand new four wheel drive Hilux to drive up to the top of Mount Matama. It’s amazing up there. You can see right over the city of Lichinga and all the surrounding villages.

We were a little bit unsure about whether or not we should attempt it seeing as it had been raining pretty solidly for the last 24 hours or so and the road up there is not great but we decided we were awesome (that might have just been me, I shouldn’t speak on behalf of us all) and our car was awesome – she’ll be right! I was secretly thinking as we started on the road… maybe the lookout would be better. And Hez even said… how about we go to a different spot. But we still kept on going.

I reckon we made it about 90% of the way up and then things went a little pear shaped. Even in low range 4WD, the track was just so slippery, we couldn’t get up the last little bit. Normally I’m pretty gung ho with those sort of things (I think the same could be said for Tob & Cam… maybe not Hez :-)), but the consequences of slipping off the side of a mountain… they’re just too dire. So we spent probably 40 mins inching our way in reverse down the hill. Tob did a great job not falling off the road, Cam did a great job directing, Hez did a great job not falling in the mud and I well… I pushed the car a bit a few times, pretty sure that didn’t help at all but it made me feel good about myself :-).

We finally got to a point where we could turn around without sliding to our death and then managed a slow, careful, safe descent going forward from that point. We even stopped to pray along the way. And we were wondering… did we do the wrong thing in even attempting to get up the top? Was it just a distraction from what we were really meant to be doing. But you know what… I think God was trying to teach us something.

I think he was trying to say that we’re not awesome, we can’t do everything, what he has ahead for us will be messy at times and scary at times and maybe even dangerous at times and a lot of the time we’ll just be going backwards and that we need to work hard together as a team to get anywhere at all and that we need to trust that in his power, he will carry us.