"Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed." Hebrews 12:12-13
In these verses, the author of Hebrews has been writing about discipline, and how it seems "painful rather than pleasant" for the moment, but how it ultimately benefits us, "yield[ing] to the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it." The writer is specifically addressing Christians and referring to God's discipline, but I imagine the concept probably resonates with all of us.
Today’s word is "journey." I LOVE this word! As both a hiker and a chronic maker of metaphors, I’m constantly seeing “journey” metaphors--paths and trails, mountaintops and valleys, varying weather conditions, various companions--as I travel through life. (See what I did there?) Lately a predominant metaphor has been one of getting to a high point on the trail, then looking back, and being able to see the path you've hiked, and getting a whole new perspective, a whole new sense of the "telos" of your journey, one that you couldn't possibly have gotten when you were climbing over rocks and making your way through swampy areas.
I'm always finding metaphors on real-life journeys as well. While I definitely appreciate the beauty of any trail I hike, my brain can't help firing off connections to seemingly unrelated things. I see a sapling growing out of bare rock and am inspired by the idea of hope in adversity. As I walk through an area recently cleared by a fallen tree, I notice the pioneering and invasive species coming in and think about what happens when human institutions fail and fall. The metaphors make themselves known, and my mind is off and running for the next few hundred (or thousand) feet.
At some point in my early hiking life, I started to imagine that everything on this earth is both existentially itself and a metaphor for deeper truths--and that it was somehow my job to discern and communicate those deeper truths.
And this, my friends, is what happens when you put an English major in the woods.
But seriously, back to the idea of discipline: So much (self-) discipline is required to complete a long-distance hike! You can't take every blue-blaze or get a ride up the trail or just stay in the same town, and still finish and say you've hiked it. You also can't push yourself so hard that you get injured, and you have to make sure you get enough fuel to power your tired self up and down mountains every day.
While you can't literally "make straight paths for your feet" most of the time, you *can* train yourself to be strong, and you can hike enough miles, day in and day out, so that what once would have been difficult becomes less difficult. And every now and then, if you keep going, you'll get to a point where you can look back and get the bigger perspective on the journey you've traveled.
Today's photo is of a certain thru-hiker named Sheltowee (also known as Dan Rogers) on Day 1 of his Appalachian Trail thru-hike, twenty-one years ago today. What a journey it was that began on that cold winter's morning on Springer Mountain!
In these verses, the author of Hebrews has been writing about discipline, and how it seems "painful rather than pleasant" for the moment, but how it ultimately benefits us, "yield[ing] to the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it." The writer is specifically addressing Christians and referring to God's discipline, but I imagine the concept probably resonates with all of us.
Today’s word is "journey." I LOVE this word! As both a hiker and a chronic maker of metaphors, I’m constantly seeing “journey” metaphors--paths and trails, mountaintops and valleys, varying weather conditions, various companions--as I travel through life. (See what I did there?) Lately a predominant metaphor has been one of getting to a high point on the trail, then looking back, and being able to see the path you've hiked, and getting a whole new perspective, a whole new sense of the "telos" of your journey, one that you couldn't possibly have gotten when you were climbing over rocks and making your way through swampy areas.
I'm always finding metaphors on real-life journeys as well. While I definitely appreciate the beauty of any trail I hike, my brain can't help firing off connections to seemingly unrelated things. I see a sapling growing out of bare rock and am inspired by the idea of hope in adversity. As I walk through an area recently cleared by a fallen tree, I notice the pioneering and invasive species coming in and think about what happens when human institutions fail and fall. The metaphors make themselves known, and my mind is off and running for the next few hundred (or thousand) feet.
At some point in my early hiking life, I started to imagine that everything on this earth is both existentially itself and a metaphor for deeper truths--and that it was somehow my job to discern and communicate those deeper truths.
And this, my friends, is what happens when you put an English major in the woods.
But seriously, back to the idea of discipline: So much (self-) discipline is required to complete a long-distance hike! You can't take every blue-blaze or get a ride up the trail or just stay in the same town, and still finish and say you've hiked it. You also can't push yourself so hard that you get injured, and you have to make sure you get enough fuel to power your tired self up and down mountains every day.
While you can't literally "make straight paths for your feet" most of the time, you *can* train yourself to be strong, and you can hike enough miles, day in and day out, so that what once would have been difficult becomes less difficult. And every now and then, if you keep going, you'll get to a point where you can look back and get the bigger perspective on the journey you've traveled.
Today's photo is of a certain thru-hiker named Sheltowee (also known as Dan Rogers) on Day 1 of his Appalachian Trail thru-hike, twenty-one years ago today. What a journey it was that began on that cold winter's morning on Springer Mountain!
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