Has it ever clicked in your mind that you can look without seeing and vice versa, or that you can hear without listening, and vice versa? You can be with someone and yet your mind is far away, limiting your ability to get the best out of your time with that person- just like being “intimate” with your spouse and at the same time, thinking about bills, or even worse, someone else. At that moment, you are there, but at the same time, “not there”.
In the same way, has it ever dawned on you that you can be alive without really “living”?
The truth is: many of us have reached a mental place where we would rather coast along in our dreary jobs, our day-to-day lives, our tiny circles, where we are simply existing and afraid to venture out for several reasons. Sometimes, we have gotten our fingers burnt when we tried to venture into new businesses or suffered bitter rejection or betrayal when we chased someone we loved.Or it may just be fear of the unknown, though we have a nagging feeling that we cannot shake off which tells us that we are not where we are meant to be.
So we are stuck in a rather frightening version of limbo, dissatisfied with where we are and yet, too afraid or too beaten to venture out.
When you think about it, the most interesting stories are about individuals who were forced to take on great challenges, make significant adjustments in their lives and perspectives, and find ways to defeat hurdles.
At the end of these stories, we often celebrate with the heroes, cry with joy and relief for them and even find that we want to be like them. However, as we go about our lives, we realise that the transition from where we are to where we need to be in order to beat our hurdles ALWAYS requires us changing significant chunks of ourselves. And as someone said, with change comes loss, with loss comes pain – and we are often so scared of the pain that we do not act, change and even remain right where we are.
And now, I will tell you the story of the frozen corpse.
A corpse was said to have been found on the mountain, frozen by morning when rescuers finally got to the body. The night before, a solitary climber had been on the mountain. He had lost his footing in the misty mountains and began to tumble down. Somehow in the fog, the climber managed to grab a ledge but was too exhausted to pull himself up and had simply stayed put. Now, as the story goes, he began to call for help, hoping someone would hear him and come to his rescue. And this continued for a long time. After a while, a voice came through the mist saying, “Let go…!”
Fast-forward to the end of the story…
They finally got to his body the next day. Someone had been able to track his heat signature from far away and confirmed there was a human being hanging from the ledge. The problem was that it was too risky to attempt a rescue at that point, so a long-distance message was boomed out to him which he must have heard in the darkness, saying, “Let go…!”.
But he didn’t let go because he was too afraid of the unknown that he could not see. Now, you may be wondering why he was told to let go and here’s the simple reason:
What he did not know was that his legs were about 2 feet from a wide area on which he would have been able to stand. He had been too afraid to let go, had held on to “safety” and had frozen to death.
Sound familiar?
Now, this is probably stretching things a bit. But the fact is that if you are tired of your life, very likely, the purpose for which you are wired and created lies out there somewhere with God beckoning in the distance and saying “Let go!”. However, we are often too afraid to let go of the known and our little matchbox lives where we find safety, ignoring the higher purpose God calls us to.
Friend, you are about to embark on the biggest adventure in God that you call your life. All He is asking you to do is “Let go!”.
John Igbinovia