Highlights from Denver...climbing

It's amazing what you can find when you look up.

While rock climbing, as in life, it's easy to get stuck staring at what's in front of you.
It's often harder to remember that in order to climb highter, we have to let go of what seems safe in the moment. The best of what's available to hold onto is above you.

Philip Yancey shared insights from his new book (releasing in October) Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? when he spoke July 9th—first at the CO Convention Center and then at his “after party” at a rock climbing gym.

As a fellow Colorado resident and outdoor adventure-junkie, I appreciated how he juxtaposed themes from mountain climbing with lessons about God.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from what I’ve read of his book so far:

I live in daily hope of getting my life under control. At home I left a desk covered with to-do lists…Maybe if I take a day off, I’ll have time…

On the mountain one bolt of lightning, splitting a rock on a nearby peak and exploding against my eardrums, exposes any illusion that I am ever in control.

Like a flash of lightning, prayer exposes for a nanosecond what I would prefer to ignore: my own true state of fragile dependence. The undone tasks accumulating at home, my family and ever other relation, temptations, health, plans for the future—all these I bring into that larger reality, God’s sphere, where I find them curiously upended.

In prayer I shift my point of view away from my own selfishness. I climb above timberline and look down at the speck that is myself. I gaze at the starts and recall what role I or any of us play in a universe beyond comprehension. Prayer is the act of seeing reality from God’s point of view.