The Key to a Red Butt

Falling: The Key to a Red Butt

As a youth director in Florida, it is almost an underlying requirement that I take my youth group skiing at least once-a-year. This is often the only season that many of the Floridians ever see as Florida has two seasons: warm spring and hot summer. This is also some of the only “terrain” that many of these kids ever see as Florida is not known for its dangerous terrain.

It is this terrain that forces me, the guy in charge, to stay very close to the base of the mountain so that I can keep an eye on every stretcher that comes down the mountain and to be near when and if someone has a scratched elbow, bruised knee, or bloody lip. It is a combination of being the guy in charge and the terrain that has made me not be a very good skier at all. In fact, after 4 years, I have only been off the bunny slope and on the chair lift once. I am so bad that I was offered my money back by one of the ski school instructors in Wolf Laurel, NC. There is a running joke within the youth group that as long as you can ski better than Rob you can come back the next year. So far every youth has been allowed back the next year.
On these retreats, we’ve gone every possible route you can go with Bible studies in keeping relative to the trip. I wish I could remember every one of them by heart, but I hate to admit: they weren’t that great. The one two years ago was, however. I don’t know why it was memorable, but it was. It could have been that this was the first year I didn’t have a kid get hurt or that I learned to snowboard instead of ski or even that everyone who attended complained very little (a new experience for any youth minister). Whatever it was, God spoke.

We started out staying in a local inn that faced the much nicer inn from the previous year. Okay maybe there was some complaining. Upon arrival I, the guy in charge, had to run and get rental forms, room reservations, and directions all before everything closed in 45 minutes. I was making good headway until all of a sudden; I decided to catch a piece of ice with my foot running up and down flights of stairs. I was sent tumbling over the bottom rail and right into a bush. Thankfully not many teenagers saw this, but it was a motel employee walking by who said it best, “you like playing with gravity don’t you?” This was all before we started the skiing and I all ready had a red butt.

When we finally made it to the first day of skiing on Beech Mountain, I was rather worn out from wearing to and fro (not to mention my experience with gravity the week before). One of the great things about skiing with Floridians is watching them walk around in their ski boots for the first hour. There is more falling in these first 60 minutes of walking than in 2 days of skiing. The truly beautiful thing about this time is that they get an understanding of gravity just a bit more. A carefree gait turns into a very frail and wary creep as they discover their new boundaries with walking.

However, it was once the skis were on and most of them hesitantly made their way to the bunny slope wobbling here and there grasping for non existent embrace that I discovered what the inn employee really meant by “playing with gravity.” These kids (both young and old-you got to have chaperones) were breaking free of the earlier learned boundaries of walking and were now rediscovering that one constant that has always been there: gravity.

Parents watch as their babes discover gravity as they stand and fall and then stand
again. The elderly discover gravity as their bodies become more and more pulled toward the ground with it. Pilots defy it constantly and sky divers embrace it. However, it is with skiing that one really learns to play with it. As these students make 2 or 3 runs on the bunny slope, some other experienced kid convinces them that they can make a run on this slope or that slope a bit higher up the mountain. The progression continues for most as they make it to the top or end up sitting with me at the bottom with the regret of a bruise (to the body or to the ego). Regardless, that progression continues until everyone at some time has truly played with gravity.

God, too, asks us to play with Him, to treat Him like gravity, to test your limits in Him. As the Alpha and Omega, is He, too, not a constant? Is He, too, not often realized at certain parts of life? A parent feels His embrace when a child is born, walks, or speaks for the first time. That parent may not realize it, but those chills on the back of his or her neck provide proof of God’s presence. An elderly person embraces God more and more upon the realization of his or her mortality as spouses, friends, and eventual selves grow closer to entering the church triumphant. Military men and women embrace His existence every day as their lives hang in the balance. However, it is those of us who live every day lives who need to rediscover God every day in some way.

Psalm 8:3-4
I look up at your macro-skies, dark and enormous,
your handmade sky-jewelry,
Moon and stars mounted in their settings.
Then I look at my micro-self and wonder,
Why do you bother with us?
Why take a second look our way?
The Message

When reading that, one can only stand back and take in the awe splendor that is our creator. However, we read in Matthew 18:3 that we are to become like children in entering the kingdom of heaven. What is it that children do? They discover, they explore, and they ask for more.
Remember watching your little brothers, sisters, cousins, children, or just other babies lie on their back and watch the ceiling fan go around and around? Remember tossing them up in the air and back down without a care in the world from them? Remember when you were a child and you spent hours playing with a bug or making a mud pie or trying to blow every daffodil on the block?

Why did that child stare at the ceiling fan? Why did that child not worry about you dropping him or her? What was so great about that bug or pie? The fan was nothing special, at least not to us. We would have been scared to death if someone 8 times our size was throwing us up wouldn’t we? You can’t even eat the mud pie and bugs are gross, right? Now, do you see why God asks us to have faith like a child?
Imagine if we took the language of Psalm 8 and really were in awe of the creation around us. Imagine if we had so little care in the world that we would let Him catch us when we were falling. Imagine enjoying the simple things in life again rather than being so caught up in schedules, deadlines, and gas prices. That would kind of be like playing with gravity.

That would be playing with God.