Dear Friends:
The waning crescent moon hangs low over the peaks when Kerry and I reach the trailhead. The headlamps of early hikers spiral up the mountain above us.
The earth rotating into the dawn pulls a gentle breeze across the desert from the west. The wind is a good thing because it is already warm as we start up the trail.
Kerry is my close friend and colleague of many years. We are in Phoenix at a business conference. Yesterday, I went to the hotel gym and he took a long walk along a canal bank.
He told me he would like to hike up the mountain. I said I had been there before and would like to join him. It’s a popular trail. Even in the pre-dawn darkness, we have a hard time finding a parking place.
The one and only time I had previously hiked up Squaw Peak was 36 years ago, when I was a vigorous 21-year old. The Summit Trail is only 1.2 miles long, but it is mostly stairs hewn out of granite slabs of varying heights from 12″ to 30,” climbing 1200 feet at a 19% grade. In other words, it is steep and has more stairs than most people encounter in a year.
I am 58 now and just eight months out from total knee replacement surgery. This is the first real test of my new knee.
The last time I took a hike this steep was on the Stowe Pinnacle in the Green Mountains of Vermont six years ago. I made it up and back but my left knee felt like a sponge crusted with sharp rocks and broken glass with every step. My love for the outdoors compelled me past the pain, but that was the last time.
Months of physical therapy and training have begun to return me to shape and have taken off pounds. My knee is pain-free, but can I trust it? I plod up the trail, keeping my head down. I pray in rhythm with my pace, “Lord, have mercy.”
Mercy is something I have been thinking about a lot lately. It used to be that I thought mercy was something other people needed. Now, having to watch every step I take, not being able to take one of them for granted, I know I need mercy.
Kerry is in better shape with longer legs. He lopes up the steps and boulders ahead of me, pausing once in a while to let me catch up. He points out the saguaro cacti lining the slope above and below us. The sky is turning pink and blue over the ridge-line across the canyon. I turn my attention back to negotiating my way up the rough mountain.
I am feeling out of balance without a walking stick or trek pole. I can’t remember when I didn’t use one, but I press ahead one foot after the other up the rocky chutes and crevices. I note that several hikers have passed me, some breathing hard. I have passed no one.
Two-thirds of the way up, the rising sun looks like it is torn in half by the serrated edges of the peaks to the east. It silhouettes Kerry on the switchback above me. “Are you doing OK? he calls to me.
“I am fine.”
“How is your knee?”
“It is OK. No pain.” I have not stopped moving since we started.
“You are like the ‘Energizer Bunny,’ you just keep going and going,” Kerry laughs. Then he disappears around a wall of rock as the trail turns from the east to the west side of the ridge. I trudge onwards and upwards. At times, I have to grasp the rock face beside the trail for leverage. Thoughts of rattlesnakes lurking occur to me, but there is far too much traffic on this trail for a snake to hang around.
Toward the top, the grade steepens, but the steps seem farther apart. I can feel the burn in my thighs and calves, but no knee pain and I am not winded. The breeze blows a welcome coolness across my sweat-soaked t-shirt.
The old spiritual, “We are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder” has been in my head since I started the hike.
We are climbing Jacob’s Ladder,
We are climbing Jacob’s Ladder,
We are climbing Jacob’s Ladder,
Soldiers of the cross.
.
Every rung goes higher, higher,
Every rung goes higher, higher,
Every rung goes higher, higher,
Soldiers of the cross.
It is a beautiful song, but those verses are not really Biblical. Jacob was on the run from the consequences of his deceptions, sleeping in the wilderness with a stone for a pillow, when he dreamed of a ladder between heaven and earth and the angels of God were going up and down it. Jacob wasn’t going anywhere on that ladder. It was God’s ladder and he was using it to show Jacob that he was with Jacob and would keep him safe.
“Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land,” God tells Jacob. “For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you” (Gen 28:15).
I am thankful for a God who reaches down to us when we can’t reach him, and gives grace to over-active sinners like Jacob and me who don’t climb so well.
At the top the trail turns, requiring a careful stretching step up a rock face through a narrow, head-bashing passage under an over-hanging boulder. Kerry is waiting for me. I sit down on the solid rock and rest for the first time. A woman with a Georgia accent as thick and sweet as molasses cheerfully takes our picture with my camera.
Kerry and I drink some water and take in the sights. “If I had known the trail was this rugged I wouldn’t have suggested we come up here with your knee and all” he says. “You knew and came anyway. I am impressed.”
“No problem. I wanted to come and it beats grunting and dodging sweat-spray from guys in university t-shirts looking to impress down in the hotel gym. Besides, I believe that if you decide to do something like this you just go and get it done.”
The descent is the big challenge for me. Will the knee take the strain? Will my shoes grip the rock so I don’t fall? The stairs and drops in the rough trail are uneven and in the early morning shadows I have a hard time judging my stride. The gravel on the granite has the slickness of ball-bearings on glass. Here is where I could really use a stick for balance.
Kerry moves ahead with assurance, while I painstakingly pick my foot placements. We are going to miss breakfast and the first lecture of the morning at this pace. I apologize to Kerry for my slowness, but he, gracious as always, says, “No, I wouldn’t have missed this for anything.”
The care I am taking not to fall or wrench my knee causes its own tension in my muscles. Walking can be a tough business, even though this is an easy stroll for most of the fitness buffs that are coming up and going down past me, some of them looking like they have 10 to 15 years on me.
Something that I read in My Utmost for His Highest when I got up this morning comes to mind —
Walking on water is easy to impulsive pluck, but walking on dry land as a disciple of Jesus Christ is a different thing. Peter walked on the water to Jesus, but he followed Him afar off on the land. We do not need the grace of God to stand crises, human nature and pride are sufficient, we can face the strain magnificently, but it does require the supernatural grace of God to live twenty-four hours in every day as a saint, to go through drudgery as a disciple, to live an ordinary, unobserved, ignored existence as a disciple of Jesus. It is inbred in us that we have to do exceptional things for God; but we have not. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things, to be holy in mean streets, among mean people, and this is not learned in five minutes (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest [Grand Rapids, MI: Discovery House, 1963], entry for October 21).
How much of my spiritual life have I been trying to learn to walk on water with Jesus when not even swimming lessons and a life-jacket have use where and how I live my life for the most part? I am coming down this mountain as I went up it, thinking, praying and taking one step at a time, taking care not to fall. I cannot run or jump. I can only plod and it proves enough since I now have the end of the trail in sight.
The mercy that protects me this day is in the humility of the gifts of my physical limitations and the alertness that moving with them requires. “So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall,” the Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians (1 Cor 10:12).
If the need or opportunity to walk on water ever comes to me, I hope and pray I keep my eyes on Jesus. He brought the floundering Peter back safely to the boat and I trust that he can do the same miracle for me.
But in the mundane deserts, rocks, corridors and sidewalks where I have to walk every day, I pray for the strength to lift my legs, the discernment of where to plant my feet each step of the way and the willing acceptance in heart and mind that it must always be so if I want to stay close to Jesus.
“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him” (Ps 34:8).
Under the mercy of Christ,
Kent
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Please note that the content and viewpoints of Mr. Hansen are his own and are not necessarily those of the C.S. Lewis Foundation. We have not edited his writing in any substantial way and have permission from him to post his content.
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Kent Hansen is a Christian attorney, author and speaker. He practices corporate law and is the managing attorney of the firm of Clayson, Mann, Yaeger & Hansen in Corona, California. Kent also serves as the general counsel of Loma Linda University and Medical Center in Loma Linda, California.
Finding God’s grace revealed in the ordinary experiences of life, spiritual renewal in Christ and prayer are Kent’s passions. He has written two books, Grace at 30,000 Feet and Other Unexpected Places published by Review & Herald in 2002 and Cleansing Fire, Healing Streams: Experiencing God’s Love Through Prayer, published by Pacific Press in spring 2007. Many of his stories and essays about God’s encompassing love have been published in magazines and journals. Kent is often found on the hiking trails of the southern California mountains, following major league baseball, playing the piano or writing his weekly email devotional, “A Word of Grace for Your Monday” that is read by men and women from Alaska to Zimbabwe.