Hanging on the Edge

Picture yourself on the side of a beautiful mountain. The hiking trails wind out to some beautiful lookouts. There are beautiful scenes below and yon that simply take your breath away. As you are caught up in the beauty that surrounds you, you hear a faint scratch of gravel. You look behind you to see who is coming up the trail to join you. No one. Ah, must've been your imagination. You go back to meditating, soaking up the beauty that God has given at this very moment for you to enjoy. Then, there it is again. The sound is fainter, but it is definitely the sound of scratching gravel. You look around. Nothing. You look over the edge and there it is...the source of the sound. There is someone with nails embedded on the edge of a cliff about to give way to the edge.

I've been that hiker...The one so caught up in the wonderful world God created for me to enjoy that I simply did not see or hear those around me that were hurting. Not anymore. Once you've been the person over the edge and survived, you become keenly aware of those that are hurting around you.

Do you ever feel like you've been just "existing" so long that when you realize it you're on the edge? I mean like THE EDGE! Not just a few days of the doldrums, but a long time of no joy, peace, or happiness. I have. It is suffocating. When the things that once was your greatest source of joy no longer is able to produce any emotion in you, somewhere, somehow things have gotten off track. Most of the time, we are the ones off track.

I recently heard a story of two lumberjacks, one young and the other older, more seasoned. The young, brawny lumberjack challenged the older one to a contest and the one who cut the most trees down at the end of the day would be the "world's greatest lumberjack." The young man chopped non-stop all day long, never taking a break. The older man, however, stopped after every tree and sat down for about 15 minutes. At the end of the day the older lumberjack and won. When questioned how he was able to win, he said that after every tree he chopped down he sat and sharpened his ax...

I think some of us go after life like the young lumberjack and at some point we are just "chopping trees" (existing) with a dull ax. Just as the older lumberjack stopped to sharpen the edge of his blade, I think we must stop and sharpen our spiritual edge. Certainly, when he stopped to sharpen his ax, he was also able to rest. Sometimes we need to get away from the things of the world and sharpen our axes and rest. Maybe then, we can climb off the edge of the cliff of hopelessness and have an edge to be more effective in God's kingdom work.