We’re going to continue on in our #harnessthemountains series, where we have been discussing awesome stories from British Columbia. This one comes from my friend Ryan, who had a group at the summit of a route called One Eye. The summit is about 6,000 feet above the valley floor with a 1,000 foot descent on snow. The summit itself is really cool because it cliffs out on one side—I mean you can walk right up to the edge and it just starts to drop, drop, drop, til it goes vertical. It’s a really unique spot be. But on the backside there’s this nice gentle slope, and you can sit down on your butt (this is called glissading)—you take your ice axe in your hand and kinda use it as a rudder and hold it just in case you need to stop. Then, you start sliding down the side of the mountain. Easy-peasy, right?
Well this particular day, Ryan was getting ready to glissade and it was white out conditions. Whiteout happens when the clouds come in over the mountains and your visibility goes to zip! I mean, not zero- zero, but maybe you can see 30 feet out in front of you. So, he starts glissading in the direction he thinks he’s supposed to go; and he’s been on the summit several times before so this wasn’t new for him. He’s going along and suddenly something appears in front of him. A purple, helium balloon just rises up and is just there! Then, it passes by and is gone. Ryan immediately stopped and was like, “What the heck was that?” This helium balloon must’ve come from the camp that’s a couple miles away and down the mountain.
The timing for this balloon, whatever they were doing—letting off balloons, I don’t know—but the timing for that balloon to pass up the side of that cliff face, right in front of Ryan… it saved his life. If he hadn’t have stopped when he saw the balloon, he potentially could have gone off the side because he was off a few degrees.
It just reminds me of how incredible God’s protection is. He watches and knows our every single move and He’s always there, always waiting. He wants to protect us. But, we have a job to do. We have to make sure that we are following His manual. He gave us His Word for a reason and the more we read it the more we know Him; the more we’ll be under his protection.
So I just want to encourage you (I will always encourage you to open the word) to study to show yourself approved. It’s not there for us to carry to church with us on Sundays or to sit on a shelf and look good with all our other books. It’s there to study, to know, and to read.
So, I hope this encourages you and I’ll talk to you next week! This is Matt with high-risk monsters (Matt with Project Forty I mean… “high-risk monsters” is my mumbling autocorrect—I like it though; perhaps we should change the name!)
-Matt