November 25th 2006: Counter-intuitive

This evening I was watching 'Touching the Void' about the real-life climbing accident where Joe Simpson was left for dead after falling into a crevasse deep inside a glacier. No-one knew he was alive and he was alone in the depths of the glacier, left to fight for his life on his own.

After trying to climb up out of the glacier with a broken leg, and realising there was no way up, he was left with the choice of staying where he was, and dying, or taking a totally counter-intuitive decision, and abseiling downwards even deeper into the dark abyss below him. Logically it seemed like he was burying himself deeper in a tomb.

And yet, miraculously, down in the deeps of the glacier, he found a way to safety, another way out.

Faith sometimes works like that. You seek the logical. You seek to know and control. But on occasions we learn more about God by going deeper. Confronted by a 'cloud of unknowing', it's sometimes at the end of our understanding, when we finally let go, that God chooses to come and meet us deeper and disclose himself/herself... chooses to hold us, chooses to reveal her love.