The opportunities to write have been few in the past couple of months. It’s ironic that I would be working on this chapter on “Perseverance” for so long! This comes out of sequence to the list of life skills in 2 Peter 1:5-8. However, I’ll fill in the other chapters in the coming weeks. This topic has been on my mind and heart continually as I have seen physical, financial, and marital distresses all around. I hope it will provide some perspective for you own call and walk.
Roger
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Monday, December 15, 2008
HANDHOLD #5 "Perseverance" 2 Peter 1:7
"Suffering Well"
...add to self-control, perseverance 2 Peter 1:7
We were wolfing our lunch under a cloudless sky at a roadside table in Poncha Springs, Colorado. Not much of a place, but it represented a trip-defining right turn on the map for us. We had pedalled south out of Buena Vista that morning, our second full day on our quest to reach Cortez in the extreme southwest, Four Corners area of Colorado. Five days, seven high passes, fueled by Kool-aid, tuna fish, and peanut butter. Twelve of us had left Denver on bicycles. Ten speeds. Heavy old Schwinns and Huffy’s weighing over thirty pounds. This was medievil biking. We really didn’t know what we were doing, so we pooled our ignorance, and concocted what had turned into a fine and pleasant form of misery previously unknown to any of us. We wore cut-off jeans and Converse sneakers. This was 1973 and real bicycle helmets hadn’t hit the market yet. So, we wore hockey helmets, ironically labelled “Cool Gear.” Not a stitch of lycra, or padding of any kind. Cotton T-shirts. We were sore and sunburned. But now we were in too deep to back out. Poncha Springs was our Rubicon. This was the westward turn that would test every commitment we had made to each other. As we gulped our grape Koolaid and downed PBJ’s we couldn’t keep our eyes from wandering upward, to the west, to the place we had to ride. The big one loomed. We didn’t want to talk about it. Monarch Pass.
The highway undulates through the valley we had ridden that morning, hugging the foothills along the Arkansas River. It was beautiful riding: the river, the fragrance of freshly cut hay in the meadows, and, except for a few challenging hills, an easy pull. The brilliance of the Rocky Mountain sun, the pristine air, and the breath-taking vista, however, could not suppress our latent fears. Now we were turning West toward the spires and crags of the Rocky Mountains. There before us was a road that lead only upward. Seventeen miles to the summit of Monarch Pass: elevation 11,312 feet. Four thousand vertical feet of climbing against the gravity of both body and soul.
These teenagers had been full of surprises. Adult and child, athlete and whiner, comedian and mutineer were stirred together in a volatile mix. They were exasperating, resilient, demanding, altruistic, childish, selfish and tough. This day they were inspiring. Knowing full well that there was no way to soften the reality of at least three hours of six percent, uphill, first gear grinding to reach the top, they set out with dogged, sun-burned determination. Four thousand feet had to be climbed with leg, lung, and will power alone. With a wide range of motivations and abilities, they were soon sorted into clusters of fellow survivors. Gasping, hunched, and glassy-eyed they fixed their stares at the pavement just in front of their tires as the pass rose relentlessly upward. “Snails pace” acquired a working definition on that afternoon. But they did it! Eventually everybody summitted. They amazed themselves, and cheered victory to each other at the top. For most, this was the pinnacle of any physical challenge they had ever attempted. There was a high-five celebration when the caboose finally arrived, and a glow of utter satisfaction on every face. Brownies were awarded as the ultimate pay-off for their courage. As we flew down the Western side of the pass, the hoots and cheers never stopped.
Fresh off that victory, we spurred one another on and rode a hundred miles the next day into Montrose. When I think back on our inexperience, our ludicrous attire, and our greenhorn unpreparedness, it is utterly audacious that we even tried this, much less accomplished it. Time after time we met people at rest stops and mountain summits who asked: “How did y’all get here.” When we replied that we had ridden our bikes from Denver, they were a the study of ambivalence. Were we lying, or crazy? This dropped-jaw amazement just fueled our team with more determination.
But, we weren’t done. We still had huge, looming challenges on our horizon. We were headed into the “Switzerland of America” and its legendary “Million Dollar Highway.” The fourth day would take us to Red Mountain Pass, 11,008 feet in elevation. From the Swiss-like village of Ouray the pass looks endless, and dangerous. No guard rails. The “Million Dollar Highway” is cut into the steep scree slopes the color of rusting iron. A lapse of concentration, or a lane-hogging flatlander behind the wheel of an RV, and a cyclist would be gravely injured. But, the group was becoming resolute. They were eager to grind it out, to tackle the pass. Again we left river and meadow, and finally, timberline, behind. We summitted and celebrated after 3,500 feet of vertical gain. We posed for a victory picture and then broke the sound barrier on our descent.
This gaggle had melded into a team. We had learned how to encourage one another. We fixed flats and kept moving. We sang and joked and teased. Our unity was hard-won from the agonies of climbing, camping, freezing and burning together. As we cruised down this final pass, following the Purgatory river into Durango, we were Lance Armstrong. We were the Tour de France. We were indefatigable. Celebration time. Chocolate shakes all around. All our passes were behind us. Now, all that remained was a forty-mile cruise into Cortez, a victory lap of sorts, our Champs Elysees.
The mistake we made was to ask an out-of-state tourist who had driven into Durango from the West what we could expect of the road ahead. “Oh, it’s mostly level,” he said. “Probably downhill, slightly rolling, in the direction you’re going. Easy travelling.” He set our expectations on coasting and cruising, and sowed the seeds of our demise.
Assumptions were made, and frozen into place. Expectations were set by that innocent, but erroneous description of the road ahead. We were soon to discover that when the assumption is the enjoyment of a downhill cruise with little exertion, then every uphill becomes an insult, a personal and painful affront. The offense, the seemingly conspiratorial torture of first-gear grinding, fueled anger that had to be vented somehow. Our resilient and intrepid team rapidly fragmented into an anarchic, epithet-spitting mutiny.
Leaving Durango to the West, we began to climb, completely contrary to our assumptions. We climbed and we climbed. It was hot, dry, and our sunburned necks were being fried. The hill wouldn’t end. This wasn’t the plan. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. It isn’t fair! The irresistable force of expectation ran headlong into the immovable object of reality. Seething frustration boiled up from the seemingly senseless grinding. The breathless heat blotted out all memory of mountain highs and victory pictures. Who planned this trip? This is stupid! I’m quitting! You leaders are morons!
Expectations are stubborn things. Once fixed in our minds they become our axis, the center of our universe. Every experience is sucked into the gravitational field of these expectations. And, if our experience does not line up and neatly orbit around our expectations, we want to hurl this reality into outer darkness. We would rather burn Copernicus at the stake, along with his irrefutable evidence, for suggesting that we had gotten it all wrong. We need a new axis for our universe. We need to challenge and replace our long-held assumptions about how things work. Unmet expectations can produce such imbalance, such cognitive dissonance, that a massive expulsion of inconvenient and irritating facts is inevitable. We want our universe to run as we designed it, or as we expected. On this day, in this heat, under these unanticipated adversities, we witnessed such an explosion of blame, anger, and rejection that our whole universe was stunned into a cosmic funk. Our team disintegrated into isolated planets of misery and retribution.
Seven uphill miles was all it took to generate such a spiteful funkiness in those young people that they wanted to blow up Colorado. A hundred times we almost dissolved into unrecoverable anarchy. This motley team erupted in a toxic cataclysm of blame, selfishness and sullen spitefulness. Mutiny was in full swing. We were on the verge of mayhem, and murder was whispered. Gone was any memory of sweet teamwork. Vaporized was every vestige of encouragement, vision, humor or patient endurance. Unfulfilled expectation raged like a wildfire, fueled by parched throats and aching quads. Imagination did everything possible to retain the stubborn expectation that ease and coasting was a divine right, and dispel the inconvenient and unremitting reality that gravity was relentless and unavoidable. Some sinister power must have tilted the earth to make us suffer. Some incompetent leader had tricked us into this misery, held in secret until this last day. This hill was put here on purpose just to taunt us, the sun is scorching with a personal vendetta, and the whole world is stupid, stupid, stupid. One brazen fact was stubbornly repelled: nobody is going to climb this hill for me. I’m the only one who can do it. The Next Right Thing, the next pedal revolution, was the least favorite option.
Scott Peck once started a book with this statement of biting realism: “Life is difficult. Most do not fully see this truth that life is difficult. Instead they moan more or less incessantly, noisily or subtly, about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties as if life were generally easy, as if life should be easy.” (Road Less Travelled p. 15) Whether he knew it or not, his thoughts echoed those of the Apostle Peter, who, nineteen hundred years beforehand declared: “Dear friend, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering as though something strange were happening to you.” (I Peter 4:12) Peter is the man who now coaches us with The Next Right Thing in his array of life skills.
So what does this brilliant life coach suggest for the weary slogger, the frustrated, angry or disenfranchised victim? “Perseverance,” says Peter, is The Next Right Thing for many whose journey seems endlessly uphill. But, we would rather hear of some other way. Can’t I quit, or catch a magical ride, or simmer in an angry snit instead. Wouldn’t anything be better than to be coached to persevere? Persevere in the same old routine, through the same level of pain, with the same old cast of characters? Yes, this Least Favorite Thing is The Next Right Thing given to us through the divine power and wisdom of the Father, because He knew we would need it in this uphill, sun-scorched world (2 P 1:3).
Perseverance needs careful definition. We need to split a semantic hair, to distinguish its nuance from another word which is often used as a synonym: that word is endurance. Our Rocky Mountain bikers had demonstrated endurance repeatedly. What they had yet to embrace on that maddening hill west of Durango, was perseverance. The difference is huge. These novice cyclists had endured much. They had shown tenacity, a capacity to suffer, and a growing tolerance for delayed gratification. By the time we reached Durango, they had ridden three hundred and fifty miles, awakened in soggy tents, and broken ice from their bicycle seats in Silverton. They had spent eight hours per day in the saddle, and endured the hassle of waiting for slowpokes, the lonely fog of fatigue, and the unavoidable grunge of sweat and camping. They endured. But, here is the important distinction between endurance and perseverance. Each day they endured because they could see a finish line, or a series of finish lines. They were promised an end at the next rest stop, meal, town, summit, personal victory or campsite. Those became their intermediate and achievable goals. Despite their suffering they knew there would be an end, and some modicum of reward, and so they admirably endured.
Perseverance is not like that. Though perseverance requires the same expensive and exhausting expenditure of energy, the same exertion against inertia and gravity, it lacks that one glimmering, shimmering appeal: a finish line. Perseverance lacks an end, or at least, a known end. Perseverance is a steady persistence, a courageous fortitude, a doggedness and steadfastness with a very disturbing caveat: the finish line is not known, or it is unseen and lying on the far side of an infuriating and ugly hill instead of at a summit in the pure, alpine air. Perseverance is that courage that presses on when the end is not what we envisioned, what we wanted, or a match for our raging expectations.
Endurance is running the mile.
Perseverance is running a household.
Endurance is learning Algebra.
Perseverance is learning to live with diabetes.
Endurance is rehabbing after knee surgery.
Perseverance is starting life again after divorce.
Endurance is winning eight Olympic Gold Medals.
Perseverance is living with two preschoolers in the house.
Endurance is hard.
Perseverance seems unfair.
Because we live in a culture of sound bytes and Extreme Makeover, it is easy to slip into the assumption that somebody, somewhere has a magical solution. Add to this the formula mill of evangelical publishing and broadcasting, and the insurmountable expectation is that perseverance must be only for those losers who can’t step into their spiritual victory. But, it turns out, and the Apostle Peter affirms, that much of life can be met only with The Next Right Thing called perseverance, seemingly the least spiritual of all the options.
Brent and Sarah have a magnanimous spirit exuding from every pore of their lives, and every word from their mouths. How wonderfully he encourages, and how insightfully she teaches. Their legacy will be one of self-giving servanthood, and humble faithfulness. They are truly the pillars, bastions of grace, of which any healthy church is built. But, unseen by many, they must relentlessly carry huge weights which sap their energies, and remove them from circulation. They give days of each week to care for a grandson whose father is MIA. Sarah continues in a high-stress job despite a heart functioning at sixty percent. Aging parents and extended family, most of whom live locally, require constant expenditures of free time, holiday plans, and vacation days. They have endured uncountable laps of this long run, and there is no end in sight. When they do have moments to ponder, and project into the future, they see no changes. In fact, they see only deeper risk, more complications, and further erosion of health and resources. Each day as they awaken to work, grand-parenting, complicated dynamics of extended family, and financial austerity, they are met with the only choice they have. It is their best choice, but their least-pleasant choice to live a God-honoring life: perseverance. Where’s the downhill coasting, or the ultimate victory, in that?
Our coach, Peter, in his list of life-defining skills (2 Peter 1:5-8) makes a logical sandwich with perseverance as its meat. This chewy, tough, dogged form of endurance is sandwiched between self-control and godliness. The private battles against anger, retreat, self-gratification and vengeance won with self-control, usher in the longer war against inertia and despair which must be fueled by perseverance. This, then, creates a character of humility and inward piety which displays authentic godliness in the real world. Self-control links to godliness through the fibrous connective tissue called perseverance.
Author Tim Hansel defines perseverance as “Courage stretched out.” (Holy Sweat) Consistent and incremental courage builds a bridge to obedience with girders of perseverance. Life in this real world must bear the weight of hassle, suffering, and fools in order to span to the shore of godliness. Perseverance is what supports and strengthens that bridge. It stands without fanfare. The traffic of our lives, and the lives of others, flows across it. Perseverance bears the weight of challenging, incessant, heavy life, and makes the commerce between personal faith and public witness flow without interruption. But, it is a strain. It requires strength. And, there is no end in sight.
Many friends flash across my mind whose perseverance is epic, but unheralded. They are head down, low-geared, and struggling, but still ascending. Words they live with like “recurring...chronic...persistent...senseless...unfair...unexpected” dominate their daily experience. They are being squeezed economically in the vice of family needs and a downsizing industry, tested to their limits every day by special needs children, made frantic over grandchildren facing chemo-therapy, and pouring fading hope into a marginal business or an eroding marriage. The way they foresee is hard, and the end they see is not pretty, nor pleasant. Formulas for success seem designed for a different world than theirs. They slog on, and have no other option. They groan along with the groaning creation described in Romans 8. Though the conditions are undesirable and harsh, they have made a choice to suffer well, recurringly. They have chosen resolute perseverance with self-control, and have not insisted that somebody somewhere owes them a free ride.
We may choose to suffer well, with perseverance, or we can seethe in a mutinous snit about the unfairness of a universe turned against us. The next best thing about the Bible, besides its crescendo of victory, resurrection and redemption, is its utter clarity and truth-telling regarding trouble on a groaning planet. Trouble is not grudgingly acknowledged as if it were a forced confession under prosecutorial questioning. It is headlined on every page of scripture. Jesus took away any pretense when he baldly asserted: “In this world, you will have trouble.” (John 16:33) Paul makes a theological blanket statement, leaving no one immune, or insulated, from distress in the eighth chapter of Romans:
“We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.” (Romans 8:22-23)
Even those of us with the slightest acquaintance with a biblical world view should not be surprised when trouble comes. But, moderns, even believers, ghetto-ized by formulas and quick-fix assurances of easy victory, whose assumptions are fed on the chip-and-dip empty calories of the media, find it hard to chew on the sinewy gristle of perseverance. But there it is, immediately following Hebrews 11, the stirring chapter documenting the great triumphs of faith, and faithfulness.
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:1-2)
This high-tensile strength piton called perseverance is driven into the rock of Jesus’ example, and the Father’s faithfulness, and our whole life hangs on it. Hupomeno is the Greek compound word. It welds two concepts together: bearing up, and under. The visual picture is that of bearing up under, remaining true under pressure and stress. Despite the pressure, pain, disappointment or fearsome potential, perseverance hangs onto what it knows, to Whom it trusts. After all the inspiration gained from the galaxy of faith and victory displayed in Hebrews 11, the first brawny word of counsel in Hebrews 12 about actually living life today as these ancient examples lived involves grasping hard life with the gritty handhold of perseverance.
Maybe we should think more personally, more practically. Is perseverance The Next Right Thing for me right now? Is there an unwanted, unexpected, and deeply disliked circumstance looming before me, or already upon me? It’s unfair. Chronic. Daily. Painful. Embarassing. Unforeseen. It won’t lie down, and it won’t go away. Blame and ranting have not succeeded in making it stop. Prayers for deliverance remain unanswered. It appears to be my lot, my inescapable burden. It is the climb that I, and I alone, must make. Will I suffer well, or fume, blame, demand and vaccilate in wasteful frustration?
But, before we can make an ultimately redemptive choice to persevere as The Next Right Thing, we need to defang a debilitating lie regarding its pedigree. Perseverance, in an age of Olympic Gold Medals, victory stories, and health-and-wealth formulas, is made to appear as one of God’s lesser (much lesser) graces. In the shadow of a zillion victory stories and hundreds of pain-relieving regimens, perseverance seems the fall-back option for the remedial, the not-quite bright. In fact, faithful Christ-followers who persevere month in and month out, procedure after procedure, biopsy after biopsy, day upon day, are frequently viewed as defective. This is never verbalized, but it is often felt, and transmitted. We, if we are in this cycle of perseverance, feel somehow that we have failed. Or worse, God has failed. Perseverers are plodders, pedestrians, remedials, the also-rans, the forgottens. Perseverance is needed only by those too dense or disobedient to achieve victory or escape. Perseverance is the redheaded stepchild of discipleship. Perseverance is what you get when your faith, or your mind, or your will, is weak.
So, along with trouble, we often travel with Job’s counselors, both external and internal. Friends, eager to help, don’t encourage perseverance as a grace, but only as a fall-back default. “Hang in there!” is the street-version bromide tossed over the shoulder as they leave the hospital room. It’s a way to end the conversation, because to hang with us in the endless round of daily perseverance seems to encourage and justify our faithless solutionlessness. As with Job, well-meaning friends packing answers are ready to help and counsel almost anything except the sheer dogged endurance for the day ahead, in all its embarassing weakness and repetitive, logistical reality.
What can be said as an answer, or as a key to victory, to the couple whose seventeen-year-old son is as rigged as a log, his body frozen in endless spasm. He now weighs more than his mother, and his needs are 24/7. Every medical intervention has been tried. Home care is needed. Countless emergencies have roused them at night. Medical bills, bottomless bureaucracy, and mind-numbing fatigue compose the fabric of their conversation. When can they ever rest, or go out on a date? What is their future? Where, or where, is the finish line?
We need an extreme makeover of this castoff virtue called perseverance, a re-issuing of a resource too seldom valued, and too quickly disdained. Though it is never easy, and will frequently be excruciatingly hard, it is not a shame, or a lesser grace, to persevere. Peter not only writes of this: he lived it. His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness...(2 Peter 1:3) The list of what God has provided does not include an asterisk with *perseverance. (Footnote: *this attribute will be your default status after you have failed to achieve real spiritual victory.) Peter’s preamble should put the lie to any such devaluation of perseverance. God has given it. It comes from His hand. It is not sub-Christian to hang in there with recurring courage, even when it has been months, or years, since the last hi-five. Admiral Jim Stockdale, a prisoner of war in Vietnam, in retrospect, captures the resilient sheen that perseverance casts over all other virtures. Tortured and imprisoned for eight years, he was later awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. “This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be. (Good to Great p. 85)
One could posit that Peter’s whole apostolic career was one long triathlon of perseverance. Few of us would want to know what he knew from the very beginning of his peripatetic preaching, coaching ministry. Peter was given irrefutable knowledge from Jesus himself from the outset of his commissioning that he would be waging a war of diminishing returns, culminating in death. From a human, physical perspective, there would be no spectacular ascension, as with Elijah, no peaceful retirement lecture circuit, no university tenure, nor some stirring, heroic martyrdom. When Peter was re-commissioned by Jesus to “Feed my sheep,” he was also shown how his life would end. When you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go...Follow me! (John 21:18-19)
One can only imagine the stunning and breath-taking impact of these words on Peter. Spontaneous, powerful, manly, adventurous, independent, and courageous Peter would end his life in helplessness. His physical body would either be impaired from weakness, or restrained by fetters. His ready will and loyal heart would be overridden by the will and power of others. He would be forced to go where he did not want to go. John informs us that Jesus showed him his end to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God.
Upon hearing this, two blows must have landed simultaneously on Peter’s solar plexus: The first is that he would die as an old man, weak and helpless. Implication: the promised Kingdom ushered in with trumpets, angels, justice and fire would not come in Peter’s lifetime. Israel would not be liberated. Bad guys would not meet their judge. History would not crescendo under the thunder of Peter’s preaching, no matter where, or with what power he proclaimed the gospel. There would be no final summit, historically speaking, for Peter to celebrate. He was not ascending to a spectacular, definable victory.
The second thump from this news must have been that it would be by his death that Peter would bring glory to God. Not his gifts, or his organizational skill, nor his homoletical eloquence would be the benchmark of glory. His death, ignominious and unwilling, perhaps untimely, from a human perspective. This seemingly senseless final straightjacket of inability would be terminal. What a prospect to ponder for your remaining years! Yet, Peter, knowing full well that he would never enjoy the summit of comfort, fame, national liberation, or peace, put his heart and life on the line every day and persevered.
We need perseverance, it seems, not only because we want to survive, but because no matter how slowly we are moving, or how weakly we are following, others are watching, and drafting off our obedience. As with Peter, perseverance, which is not glorious to the practitioner, is immensely glorifying to the Master. Perseverance practiced and embraced is a grace observed for every other fellow struggler. The perseverer validates the core theology of the Fall, and the need for outside intervention. Perseverance speaks truth in slogging, just as gratitude shouts truth in victory. The Master is in view, and he is glorified.
Peter followed, even when he was in possession of terrible knowledge. The uphill would never end. He would never coast into meadows of ease. He wasn’t going to meet his end with a sound track, the rapture, a chariot of fire, or on a victory stand. Here we find Peter, writing some thirty years later, coaching a new generation of believers to accept the assignment God is giving to them, both individually and collectively. Echoing in his ears were the words of Jesus, when Peter wanted to know if his assignment was fair and equitable with the task and circumstances placed on others: ...what is that to you? You must follow me. (John 21:22)
Truth be known, some of us have resisted the development of perseverance in our array of life skills because we insist on knowing the outcomes first. We demand full disclosure, not only of our risks and benefits, but of the very mind of the Master. We want full and comprehensive disclosure of what this exercise will do for me, what it will gain for me, how it will impact me, before we approve the Master’s plan. We feel entitled to the blessings and privileges of others, the joys and perks of a friend, the notoriety or platform of a contemporary, rather than humble acceptance of our own assignment. But true perseverance listens to the call, receives the sometimes brutal facts called reality, and follows. Perseverance bears the Name with hope, humility, and expectancy. How we need this tough grace in a culture laced with ubiquitous narcissism, and flat denial of brute facts.
But there is a more practical, earthy reason we need to develop perseverance. There are fourteen mountain summits above 8,000 meters (26,000 ft.) on the planet. They have legendary names like Everest, K2/ Cho Oyo, Llotse, Makalu, and Annapurna. They are infamous for their “death zone,” which is the height above 26,000 feet. Above this altitude all humans rapidly degrade and will eventually die due to diminished oxygen. Though many have summited without oxygen, every climber knows that, once in these stratospheric climes, they are racing the clock. They must push to a high camp from which to launch a final assault. Then, usually very early in the morning, perhaps two or three AM, they make their final assault on the summit. They must summit and get back down as quickly as possible. It is a well known, dark reality of climbing, that most mountaineers do well on the ascent: they are focussed on the goal, and enduring of the suffering. But many, tragically, die on the way down. The descent is the most dangerous part of the climb, both physically and mentally. The body is exhausted, and the mind is cloudy. Psychologically, the thrill is over. The goal has been reached. The summit registry has been signed and the pictures have been taken. It is on the descent that a very critical shift in thinking and acting must take place. The climber, who has been choosing and willing, and enduring the upward pursuit of the summit, with all its measurable glory, must now shift his attention and focus to just getting back to the tent. One careful footplant in front of another. Don’t stumble. Concentrate on the next step, the safe belay, proper hydration, and staying warm. What was a once a guazy quest is now a migraine. What was once a vision is now altitude sickness. Heroism has been reduced to simply not sitting down, not quitting, not dying. This is perseverance. It gets us to the next safe step, the next gasp of oxygen, the next minimal, incremental stage. Perseverance values the descent, with its routinized checklist, and concerns for basics. This is not glory yet. It’s basic survival for now. But, unless we learn perseverance in the fog of fatigue and fear, we will not arrive at the next tent, with its hot cup of tea, and cadre of fellow-strugglers. Though no one can persevere for us, there are many who are like us, and who will join us.
Googling “get rich,” I received 39 million references in .17 seconds. For “get well” there were 202 million references in just .18 seconds. “Be successful” gave 65 million possibilities in .5 seconds. These are samples of the raging desire for a fix, a bail-out, a pill, a sweatless nirvana on earth, hopefully this week. Our life coach Peter would have loved that too. But, he loved his Lord and Master more than he craved instant answers. And so Peter gives us a handhold which none of us want, but which all of us need. Persevere. It is the Master’s provision for this life, and the one to come.
"Trees above timber line have a dimension to their growth not often recognized by the casual passerby. It is the rare and elegant quality of the actual wood produced with the wind-tossed trees. Its grain is of exquisite texture interspersed with whorls and curving lines of unusual gracefulness. The stresses and strains of being tossed and twisted by the wind and sleet and deep snows of winter produce an extra flow of resins in the tree. Not only does this give the fibers a remarkable tight-grained texture, but it gives off also an exquisite fragrance.
An expert violin maker, who is a master craftsman, tells me that he spends weeks each summer searching for special trees above timber line. From these he takes his choicest material to create musical instruments of the finest quality and tone.
Wood produced in the high and tough terrain above the usual timber stands bears within it a rare timbre and lovely resonance not found in ordinary lumber cut at lower elevations. The fury of storms, the shortness of the growing season, the wrenching of the winds, the strain of survival in such an austere setting—all these combine to produce some of the toughest, choicest, most wondrous wood in all the world.
Here is wood grown on a guant rock ridge on some remote mountain range that one day will grace a violin, cello or guitar in Lincoln Center. From those tree fibers will come the finest music ever made by man. It’s melodies and notes will enrich a thousand listeners, and, by modern communication, encircle the globe to inspire a million more.
But it all began with a sturdy tree, set apart, growing slowly, unknown, all alone on a distant hill against the sky edge." (Sky Edge, Philip Keller, p. 85,86)
...add to self-control, perseverance 2 Peter 1:7
We were wolfing our lunch under a cloudless sky at a roadside table in Poncha Springs, Colorado. Not much of a place, but it represented a trip-defining right turn on the map for us. We had pedalled south out of Buena Vista that morning, our second full day on our quest to reach Cortez in the extreme southwest, Four Corners area of Colorado. Five days, seven high passes, fueled by Kool-aid, tuna fish, and peanut butter. Twelve of us had left Denver on bicycles. Ten speeds. Heavy old Schwinns and Huffy’s weighing over thirty pounds. This was medievil biking. We really didn’t know what we were doing, so we pooled our ignorance, and concocted what had turned into a fine and pleasant form of misery previously unknown to any of us. We wore cut-off jeans and Converse sneakers. This was 1973 and real bicycle helmets hadn’t hit the market yet. So, we wore hockey helmets, ironically labelled “Cool Gear.” Not a stitch of lycra, or padding of any kind. Cotton T-shirts. We were sore and sunburned. But now we were in too deep to back out. Poncha Springs was our Rubicon. This was the westward turn that would test every commitment we had made to each other. As we gulped our grape Koolaid and downed PBJ’s we couldn’t keep our eyes from wandering upward, to the west, to the place we had to ride. The big one loomed. We didn’t want to talk about it. Monarch Pass.
The highway undulates through the valley we had ridden that morning, hugging the foothills along the Arkansas River. It was beautiful riding: the river, the fragrance of freshly cut hay in the meadows, and, except for a few challenging hills, an easy pull. The brilliance of the Rocky Mountain sun, the pristine air, and the breath-taking vista, however, could not suppress our latent fears. Now we were turning West toward the spires and crags of the Rocky Mountains. There before us was a road that lead only upward. Seventeen miles to the summit of Monarch Pass: elevation 11,312 feet. Four thousand vertical feet of climbing against the gravity of both body and soul.
These teenagers had been full of surprises. Adult and child, athlete and whiner, comedian and mutineer were stirred together in a volatile mix. They were exasperating, resilient, demanding, altruistic, childish, selfish and tough. This day they were inspiring. Knowing full well that there was no way to soften the reality of at least three hours of six percent, uphill, first gear grinding to reach the top, they set out with dogged, sun-burned determination. Four thousand feet had to be climbed with leg, lung, and will power alone. With a wide range of motivations and abilities, they were soon sorted into clusters of fellow survivors. Gasping, hunched, and glassy-eyed they fixed their stares at the pavement just in front of their tires as the pass rose relentlessly upward. “Snails pace” acquired a working definition on that afternoon. But they did it! Eventually everybody summitted. They amazed themselves, and cheered victory to each other at the top. For most, this was the pinnacle of any physical challenge they had ever attempted. There was a high-five celebration when the caboose finally arrived, and a glow of utter satisfaction on every face. Brownies were awarded as the ultimate pay-off for their courage. As we flew down the Western side of the pass, the hoots and cheers never stopped.
Fresh off that victory, we spurred one another on and rode a hundred miles the next day into Montrose. When I think back on our inexperience, our ludicrous attire, and our greenhorn unpreparedness, it is utterly audacious that we even tried this, much less accomplished it. Time after time we met people at rest stops and mountain summits who asked: “How did y’all get here.” When we replied that we had ridden our bikes from Denver, they were a the study of ambivalence. Were we lying, or crazy? This dropped-jaw amazement just fueled our team with more determination.
But, we weren’t done. We still had huge, looming challenges on our horizon. We were headed into the “Switzerland of America” and its legendary “Million Dollar Highway.” The fourth day would take us to Red Mountain Pass, 11,008 feet in elevation. From the Swiss-like village of Ouray the pass looks endless, and dangerous. No guard rails. The “Million Dollar Highway” is cut into the steep scree slopes the color of rusting iron. A lapse of concentration, or a lane-hogging flatlander behind the wheel of an RV, and a cyclist would be gravely injured. But, the group was becoming resolute. They were eager to grind it out, to tackle the pass. Again we left river and meadow, and finally, timberline, behind. We summitted and celebrated after 3,500 feet of vertical gain. We posed for a victory picture and then broke the sound barrier on our descent.
This gaggle had melded into a team. We had learned how to encourage one another. We fixed flats and kept moving. We sang and joked and teased. Our unity was hard-won from the agonies of climbing, camping, freezing and burning together. As we cruised down this final pass, following the Purgatory river into Durango, we were Lance Armstrong. We were the Tour de France. We were indefatigable. Celebration time. Chocolate shakes all around. All our passes were behind us. Now, all that remained was a forty-mile cruise into Cortez, a victory lap of sorts, our Champs Elysees.
The mistake we made was to ask an out-of-state tourist who had driven into Durango from the West what we could expect of the road ahead. “Oh, it’s mostly level,” he said. “Probably downhill, slightly rolling, in the direction you’re going. Easy travelling.” He set our expectations on coasting and cruising, and sowed the seeds of our demise.
Assumptions were made, and frozen into place. Expectations were set by that innocent, but erroneous description of the road ahead. We were soon to discover that when the assumption is the enjoyment of a downhill cruise with little exertion, then every uphill becomes an insult, a personal and painful affront. The offense, the seemingly conspiratorial torture of first-gear grinding, fueled anger that had to be vented somehow. Our resilient and intrepid team rapidly fragmented into an anarchic, epithet-spitting mutiny.
Leaving Durango to the West, we began to climb, completely contrary to our assumptions. We climbed and we climbed. It was hot, dry, and our sunburned necks were being fried. The hill wouldn’t end. This wasn’t the plan. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. It isn’t fair! The irresistable force of expectation ran headlong into the immovable object of reality. Seething frustration boiled up from the seemingly senseless grinding. The breathless heat blotted out all memory of mountain highs and victory pictures. Who planned this trip? This is stupid! I’m quitting! You leaders are morons!
Expectations are stubborn things. Once fixed in our minds they become our axis, the center of our universe. Every experience is sucked into the gravitational field of these expectations. And, if our experience does not line up and neatly orbit around our expectations, we want to hurl this reality into outer darkness. We would rather burn Copernicus at the stake, along with his irrefutable evidence, for suggesting that we had gotten it all wrong. We need a new axis for our universe. We need to challenge and replace our long-held assumptions about how things work. Unmet expectations can produce such imbalance, such cognitive dissonance, that a massive expulsion of inconvenient and irritating facts is inevitable. We want our universe to run as we designed it, or as we expected. On this day, in this heat, under these unanticipated adversities, we witnessed such an explosion of blame, anger, and rejection that our whole universe was stunned into a cosmic funk. Our team disintegrated into isolated planets of misery and retribution.
Seven uphill miles was all it took to generate such a spiteful funkiness in those young people that they wanted to blow up Colorado. A hundred times we almost dissolved into unrecoverable anarchy. This motley team erupted in a toxic cataclysm of blame, selfishness and sullen spitefulness. Mutiny was in full swing. We were on the verge of mayhem, and murder was whispered. Gone was any memory of sweet teamwork. Vaporized was every vestige of encouragement, vision, humor or patient endurance. Unfulfilled expectation raged like a wildfire, fueled by parched throats and aching quads. Imagination did everything possible to retain the stubborn expectation that ease and coasting was a divine right, and dispel the inconvenient and unremitting reality that gravity was relentless and unavoidable. Some sinister power must have tilted the earth to make us suffer. Some incompetent leader had tricked us into this misery, held in secret until this last day. This hill was put here on purpose just to taunt us, the sun is scorching with a personal vendetta, and the whole world is stupid, stupid, stupid. One brazen fact was stubbornly repelled: nobody is going to climb this hill for me. I’m the only one who can do it. The Next Right Thing, the next pedal revolution, was the least favorite option.
Scott Peck once started a book with this statement of biting realism: “Life is difficult. Most do not fully see this truth that life is difficult. Instead they moan more or less incessantly, noisily or subtly, about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties as if life were generally easy, as if life should be easy.” (Road Less Travelled p. 15) Whether he knew it or not, his thoughts echoed those of the Apostle Peter, who, nineteen hundred years beforehand declared: “Dear friend, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering as though something strange were happening to you.” (I Peter 4:12) Peter is the man who now coaches us with The Next Right Thing in his array of life skills.
So what does this brilliant life coach suggest for the weary slogger, the frustrated, angry or disenfranchised victim? “Perseverance,” says Peter, is The Next Right Thing for many whose journey seems endlessly uphill. But, we would rather hear of some other way. Can’t I quit, or catch a magical ride, or simmer in an angry snit instead. Wouldn’t anything be better than to be coached to persevere? Persevere in the same old routine, through the same level of pain, with the same old cast of characters? Yes, this Least Favorite Thing is The Next Right Thing given to us through the divine power and wisdom of the Father, because He knew we would need it in this uphill, sun-scorched world (2 P 1:3).
Perseverance needs careful definition. We need to split a semantic hair, to distinguish its nuance from another word which is often used as a synonym: that word is endurance. Our Rocky Mountain bikers had demonstrated endurance repeatedly. What they had yet to embrace on that maddening hill west of Durango, was perseverance. The difference is huge. These novice cyclists had endured much. They had shown tenacity, a capacity to suffer, and a growing tolerance for delayed gratification. By the time we reached Durango, they had ridden three hundred and fifty miles, awakened in soggy tents, and broken ice from their bicycle seats in Silverton. They had spent eight hours per day in the saddle, and endured the hassle of waiting for slowpokes, the lonely fog of fatigue, and the unavoidable grunge of sweat and camping. They endured. But, here is the important distinction between endurance and perseverance. Each day they endured because they could see a finish line, or a series of finish lines. They were promised an end at the next rest stop, meal, town, summit, personal victory or campsite. Those became their intermediate and achievable goals. Despite their suffering they knew there would be an end, and some modicum of reward, and so they admirably endured.
Perseverance is not like that. Though perseverance requires the same expensive and exhausting expenditure of energy, the same exertion against inertia and gravity, it lacks that one glimmering, shimmering appeal: a finish line. Perseverance lacks an end, or at least, a known end. Perseverance is a steady persistence, a courageous fortitude, a doggedness and steadfastness with a very disturbing caveat: the finish line is not known, or it is unseen and lying on the far side of an infuriating and ugly hill instead of at a summit in the pure, alpine air. Perseverance is that courage that presses on when the end is not what we envisioned, what we wanted, or a match for our raging expectations.
Endurance is running the mile.
Perseverance is running a household.
Endurance is learning Algebra.
Perseverance is learning to live with diabetes.
Endurance is rehabbing after knee surgery.
Perseverance is starting life again after divorce.
Endurance is winning eight Olympic Gold Medals.
Perseverance is living with two preschoolers in the house.
Endurance is hard.
Perseverance seems unfair.
Because we live in a culture of sound bytes and Extreme Makeover, it is easy to slip into the assumption that somebody, somewhere has a magical solution. Add to this the formula mill of evangelical publishing and broadcasting, and the insurmountable expectation is that perseverance must be only for those losers who can’t step into their spiritual victory. But, it turns out, and the Apostle Peter affirms, that much of life can be met only with The Next Right Thing called perseverance, seemingly the least spiritual of all the options.
Brent and Sarah have a magnanimous spirit exuding from every pore of their lives, and every word from their mouths. How wonderfully he encourages, and how insightfully she teaches. Their legacy will be one of self-giving servanthood, and humble faithfulness. They are truly the pillars, bastions of grace, of which any healthy church is built. But, unseen by many, they must relentlessly carry huge weights which sap their energies, and remove them from circulation. They give days of each week to care for a grandson whose father is MIA. Sarah continues in a high-stress job despite a heart functioning at sixty percent. Aging parents and extended family, most of whom live locally, require constant expenditures of free time, holiday plans, and vacation days. They have endured uncountable laps of this long run, and there is no end in sight. When they do have moments to ponder, and project into the future, they see no changes. In fact, they see only deeper risk, more complications, and further erosion of health and resources. Each day as they awaken to work, grand-parenting, complicated dynamics of extended family, and financial austerity, they are met with the only choice they have. It is their best choice, but their least-pleasant choice to live a God-honoring life: perseverance. Where’s the downhill coasting, or the ultimate victory, in that?
Our coach, Peter, in his list of life-defining skills (2 Peter 1:5-8) makes a logical sandwich with perseverance as its meat. This chewy, tough, dogged form of endurance is sandwiched between self-control and godliness. The private battles against anger, retreat, self-gratification and vengeance won with self-control, usher in the longer war against inertia and despair which must be fueled by perseverance. This, then, creates a character of humility and inward piety which displays authentic godliness in the real world. Self-control links to godliness through the fibrous connective tissue called perseverance.
Author Tim Hansel defines perseverance as “Courage stretched out.” (Holy Sweat) Consistent and incremental courage builds a bridge to obedience with girders of perseverance. Life in this real world must bear the weight of hassle, suffering, and fools in order to span to the shore of godliness. Perseverance is what supports and strengthens that bridge. It stands without fanfare. The traffic of our lives, and the lives of others, flows across it. Perseverance bears the weight of challenging, incessant, heavy life, and makes the commerce between personal faith and public witness flow without interruption. But, it is a strain. It requires strength. And, there is no end in sight.
Many friends flash across my mind whose perseverance is epic, but unheralded. They are head down, low-geared, and struggling, but still ascending. Words they live with like “recurring...chronic...persistent...senseless...unfair...unexpected” dominate their daily experience. They are being squeezed economically in the vice of family needs and a downsizing industry, tested to their limits every day by special needs children, made frantic over grandchildren facing chemo-therapy, and pouring fading hope into a marginal business or an eroding marriage. The way they foresee is hard, and the end they see is not pretty, nor pleasant. Formulas for success seem designed for a different world than theirs. They slog on, and have no other option. They groan along with the groaning creation described in Romans 8. Though the conditions are undesirable and harsh, they have made a choice to suffer well, recurringly. They have chosen resolute perseverance with self-control, and have not insisted that somebody somewhere owes them a free ride.
We may choose to suffer well, with perseverance, or we can seethe in a mutinous snit about the unfairness of a universe turned against us. The next best thing about the Bible, besides its crescendo of victory, resurrection and redemption, is its utter clarity and truth-telling regarding trouble on a groaning planet. Trouble is not grudgingly acknowledged as if it were a forced confession under prosecutorial questioning. It is headlined on every page of scripture. Jesus took away any pretense when he baldly asserted: “In this world, you will have trouble.” (John 16:33) Paul makes a theological blanket statement, leaving no one immune, or insulated, from distress in the eighth chapter of Romans:
“We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.” (Romans 8:22-23)
Even those of us with the slightest acquaintance with a biblical world view should not be surprised when trouble comes. But, moderns, even believers, ghetto-ized by formulas and quick-fix assurances of easy victory, whose assumptions are fed on the chip-and-dip empty calories of the media, find it hard to chew on the sinewy gristle of perseverance. But there it is, immediately following Hebrews 11, the stirring chapter documenting the great triumphs of faith, and faithfulness.
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:1-2)
This high-tensile strength piton called perseverance is driven into the rock of Jesus’ example, and the Father’s faithfulness, and our whole life hangs on it. Hupomeno is the Greek compound word. It welds two concepts together: bearing up, and under. The visual picture is that of bearing up under, remaining true under pressure and stress. Despite the pressure, pain, disappointment or fearsome potential, perseverance hangs onto what it knows, to Whom it trusts. After all the inspiration gained from the galaxy of faith and victory displayed in Hebrews 11, the first brawny word of counsel in Hebrews 12 about actually living life today as these ancient examples lived involves grasping hard life with the gritty handhold of perseverance.
Maybe we should think more personally, more practically. Is perseverance The Next Right Thing for me right now? Is there an unwanted, unexpected, and deeply disliked circumstance looming before me, or already upon me? It’s unfair. Chronic. Daily. Painful. Embarassing. Unforeseen. It won’t lie down, and it won’t go away. Blame and ranting have not succeeded in making it stop. Prayers for deliverance remain unanswered. It appears to be my lot, my inescapable burden. It is the climb that I, and I alone, must make. Will I suffer well, or fume, blame, demand and vaccilate in wasteful frustration?
But, before we can make an ultimately redemptive choice to persevere as The Next Right Thing, we need to defang a debilitating lie regarding its pedigree. Perseverance, in an age of Olympic Gold Medals, victory stories, and health-and-wealth formulas, is made to appear as one of God’s lesser (much lesser) graces. In the shadow of a zillion victory stories and hundreds of pain-relieving regimens, perseverance seems the fall-back option for the remedial, the not-quite bright. In fact, faithful Christ-followers who persevere month in and month out, procedure after procedure, biopsy after biopsy, day upon day, are frequently viewed as defective. This is never verbalized, but it is often felt, and transmitted. We, if we are in this cycle of perseverance, feel somehow that we have failed. Or worse, God has failed. Perseverers are plodders, pedestrians, remedials, the also-rans, the forgottens. Perseverance is needed only by those too dense or disobedient to achieve victory or escape. Perseverance is the redheaded stepchild of discipleship. Perseverance is what you get when your faith, or your mind, or your will, is weak.
So, along with trouble, we often travel with Job’s counselors, both external and internal. Friends, eager to help, don’t encourage perseverance as a grace, but only as a fall-back default. “Hang in there!” is the street-version bromide tossed over the shoulder as they leave the hospital room. It’s a way to end the conversation, because to hang with us in the endless round of daily perseverance seems to encourage and justify our faithless solutionlessness. As with Job, well-meaning friends packing answers are ready to help and counsel almost anything except the sheer dogged endurance for the day ahead, in all its embarassing weakness and repetitive, logistical reality.
What can be said as an answer, or as a key to victory, to the couple whose seventeen-year-old son is as rigged as a log, his body frozen in endless spasm. He now weighs more than his mother, and his needs are 24/7. Every medical intervention has been tried. Home care is needed. Countless emergencies have roused them at night. Medical bills, bottomless bureaucracy, and mind-numbing fatigue compose the fabric of their conversation. When can they ever rest, or go out on a date? What is their future? Where, or where, is the finish line?
We need an extreme makeover of this castoff virtue called perseverance, a re-issuing of a resource too seldom valued, and too quickly disdained. Though it is never easy, and will frequently be excruciatingly hard, it is not a shame, or a lesser grace, to persevere. Peter not only writes of this: he lived it. His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness...(2 Peter 1:3) The list of what God has provided does not include an asterisk with *perseverance. (Footnote: *this attribute will be your default status after you have failed to achieve real spiritual victory.) Peter’s preamble should put the lie to any such devaluation of perseverance. God has given it. It comes from His hand. It is not sub-Christian to hang in there with recurring courage, even when it has been months, or years, since the last hi-five. Admiral Jim Stockdale, a prisoner of war in Vietnam, in retrospect, captures the resilient sheen that perseverance casts over all other virtures. Tortured and imprisoned for eight years, he was later awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. “This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be. (Good to Great p. 85)
One could posit that Peter’s whole apostolic career was one long triathlon of perseverance. Few of us would want to know what he knew from the very beginning of his peripatetic preaching, coaching ministry. Peter was given irrefutable knowledge from Jesus himself from the outset of his commissioning that he would be waging a war of diminishing returns, culminating in death. From a human, physical perspective, there would be no spectacular ascension, as with Elijah, no peaceful retirement lecture circuit, no university tenure, nor some stirring, heroic martyrdom. When Peter was re-commissioned by Jesus to “Feed my sheep,” he was also shown how his life would end. When you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go...Follow me! (John 21:18-19)
One can only imagine the stunning and breath-taking impact of these words on Peter. Spontaneous, powerful, manly, adventurous, independent, and courageous Peter would end his life in helplessness. His physical body would either be impaired from weakness, or restrained by fetters. His ready will and loyal heart would be overridden by the will and power of others. He would be forced to go where he did not want to go. John informs us that Jesus showed him his end to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God.
Upon hearing this, two blows must have landed simultaneously on Peter’s solar plexus: The first is that he would die as an old man, weak and helpless. Implication: the promised Kingdom ushered in with trumpets, angels, justice and fire would not come in Peter’s lifetime. Israel would not be liberated. Bad guys would not meet their judge. History would not crescendo under the thunder of Peter’s preaching, no matter where, or with what power he proclaimed the gospel. There would be no final summit, historically speaking, for Peter to celebrate. He was not ascending to a spectacular, definable victory.
The second thump from this news must have been that it would be by his death that Peter would bring glory to God. Not his gifts, or his organizational skill, nor his homoletical eloquence would be the benchmark of glory. His death, ignominious and unwilling, perhaps untimely, from a human perspective. This seemingly senseless final straightjacket of inability would be terminal. What a prospect to ponder for your remaining years! Yet, Peter, knowing full well that he would never enjoy the summit of comfort, fame, national liberation, or peace, put his heart and life on the line every day and persevered.
We need perseverance, it seems, not only because we want to survive, but because no matter how slowly we are moving, or how weakly we are following, others are watching, and drafting off our obedience. As with Peter, perseverance, which is not glorious to the practitioner, is immensely glorifying to the Master. Perseverance practiced and embraced is a grace observed for every other fellow struggler. The perseverer validates the core theology of the Fall, and the need for outside intervention. Perseverance speaks truth in slogging, just as gratitude shouts truth in victory. The Master is in view, and he is glorified.
Peter followed, even when he was in possession of terrible knowledge. The uphill would never end. He would never coast into meadows of ease. He wasn’t going to meet his end with a sound track, the rapture, a chariot of fire, or on a victory stand. Here we find Peter, writing some thirty years later, coaching a new generation of believers to accept the assignment God is giving to them, both individually and collectively. Echoing in his ears were the words of Jesus, when Peter wanted to know if his assignment was fair and equitable with the task and circumstances placed on others: ...what is that to you? You must follow me. (John 21:22)
Truth be known, some of us have resisted the development of perseverance in our array of life skills because we insist on knowing the outcomes first. We demand full disclosure, not only of our risks and benefits, but of the very mind of the Master. We want full and comprehensive disclosure of what this exercise will do for me, what it will gain for me, how it will impact me, before we approve the Master’s plan. We feel entitled to the blessings and privileges of others, the joys and perks of a friend, the notoriety or platform of a contemporary, rather than humble acceptance of our own assignment. But true perseverance listens to the call, receives the sometimes brutal facts called reality, and follows. Perseverance bears the Name with hope, humility, and expectancy. How we need this tough grace in a culture laced with ubiquitous narcissism, and flat denial of brute facts.
But there is a more practical, earthy reason we need to develop perseverance. There are fourteen mountain summits above 8,000 meters (26,000 ft.) on the planet. They have legendary names like Everest, K2/ Cho Oyo, Llotse, Makalu, and Annapurna. They are infamous for their “death zone,” which is the height above 26,000 feet. Above this altitude all humans rapidly degrade and will eventually die due to diminished oxygen. Though many have summited without oxygen, every climber knows that, once in these stratospheric climes, they are racing the clock. They must push to a high camp from which to launch a final assault. Then, usually very early in the morning, perhaps two or three AM, they make their final assault on the summit. They must summit and get back down as quickly as possible. It is a well known, dark reality of climbing, that most mountaineers do well on the ascent: they are focussed on the goal, and enduring of the suffering. But many, tragically, die on the way down. The descent is the most dangerous part of the climb, both physically and mentally. The body is exhausted, and the mind is cloudy. Psychologically, the thrill is over. The goal has been reached. The summit registry has been signed and the pictures have been taken. It is on the descent that a very critical shift in thinking and acting must take place. The climber, who has been choosing and willing, and enduring the upward pursuit of the summit, with all its measurable glory, must now shift his attention and focus to just getting back to the tent. One careful footplant in front of another. Don’t stumble. Concentrate on the next step, the safe belay, proper hydration, and staying warm. What was a once a guazy quest is now a migraine. What was once a vision is now altitude sickness. Heroism has been reduced to simply not sitting down, not quitting, not dying. This is perseverance. It gets us to the next safe step, the next gasp of oxygen, the next minimal, incremental stage. Perseverance values the descent, with its routinized checklist, and concerns for basics. This is not glory yet. It’s basic survival for now. But, unless we learn perseverance in the fog of fatigue and fear, we will not arrive at the next tent, with its hot cup of tea, and cadre of fellow-strugglers. Though no one can persevere for us, there are many who are like us, and who will join us.
Googling “get rich,” I received 39 million references in .17 seconds. For “get well” there were 202 million references in just .18 seconds. “Be successful” gave 65 million possibilities in .5 seconds. These are samples of the raging desire for a fix, a bail-out, a pill, a sweatless nirvana on earth, hopefully this week. Our life coach Peter would have loved that too. But, he loved his Lord and Master more than he craved instant answers. And so Peter gives us a handhold which none of us want, but which all of us need. Persevere. It is the Master’s provision for this life, and the one to come.
"Trees above timber line have a dimension to their growth not often recognized by the casual passerby. It is the rare and elegant quality of the actual wood produced with the wind-tossed trees. Its grain is of exquisite texture interspersed with whorls and curving lines of unusual gracefulness. The stresses and strains of being tossed and twisted by the wind and sleet and deep snows of winter produce an extra flow of resins in the tree. Not only does this give the fibers a remarkable tight-grained texture, but it gives off also an exquisite fragrance.
An expert violin maker, who is a master craftsman, tells me that he spends weeks each summer searching for special trees above timber line. From these he takes his choicest material to create musical instruments of the finest quality and tone.
Wood produced in the high and tough terrain above the usual timber stands bears within it a rare timbre and lovely resonance not found in ordinary lumber cut at lower elevations. The fury of storms, the shortness of the growing season, the wrenching of the winds, the strain of survival in such an austere setting—all these combine to produce some of the toughest, choicest, most wondrous wood in all the world.
Here is wood grown on a guant rock ridge on some remote mountain range that one day will grace a violin, cello or guitar in Lincoln Center. From those tree fibers will come the finest music ever made by man. It’s melodies and notes will enrich a thousand listeners, and, by modern communication, encircle the globe to inspire a million more.
But it all began with a sturdy tree, set apart, growing slowly, unknown, all alone on a distant hill against the sky edge." (Sky Edge, Philip Keller, p. 85,86)
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