Clay in the Hands

I had the unique experience of participating for the last two and a half days with a great group of people in a leadership retreat.  Leadership Levelland began this past weekend.  We were bused to a Christian camp a couple of hours north of here where we had sessions on leadership, personality studies and various activities.  On Monday, we spent all day on the challenge course – all 26 of us.  We did all kinds of different things there but one of my favorite was called the Flying Squirrel.

In this element we had 12 people.  One person was hooked to one end of a long rope that extended up to a pulley 30 feet off the ground and then down to the other 11 who were hooked to the rope as well.  There were simple instructions:  “The squirrel (ie. me in this case) runs in one direction, and the team runs in the other direction.  When all the slack is taken out of the rope, the squirrel will be immediately carried 20 feet in the air.”

I was excited.  This was going to be a rush.  The facilitator counted off and on 3, I ran one way and the team ran the other.  I took off as fast as I could – the part I failed to remember is that I don’t run much.  I was trying so hard to make this work that I lost my balance and fell flat on my face, Superman style, in the dirt about 10 from where I started.  (Yes, in my mind I had envisioned this very differently).  Just as I was doing the chest crawl to try and get back up, the team hit the end of the slack in the rope and I shot 20 feet in the air.  It was still a rush!  The others watching said all they could see was me go down into the dirt, a big cloud of dust and then me shoot up out of the cloud – I am sure it was quite a sight.

Here are two of the things I took away from the flying squirrel experience.  One is that sometimes when we are trying new things and working our plan as best we can we still fall.  It doesn’t mean that we are a failure, it just means that we failed in that one thing – we have to get up and keep trying.

But the most important aspect to this experience was the reminder that when you have a team working for the same goal, they are there to pick you up.  We are all in this together.

So where are you today?  Have you fallen?  Get up, dust off and keep going.

Or, are you the person who should be helping someone else up after they have fallen?

As Christians, we are all on the same team, striving toward the same goal.  Reach down and pick someone up today.