Don't look at the trees

Kim Reichhelm

Kim Reichhelm, two times “extreme skiing” world champion, is an adrenaline junkie. She has been skiing since she was three! You may have seen her on television, skiing down the face of a treacherous mountain. Some skiers have died in such places, others have been seriously injured, but the sport of extreme skiing is enticing more and more people to the sheer danger of the challenge. An article entitled “The Trees: Lovely, Dark, and Deep,” in the November 1999 issue of Outside magazine, says that one of the favorite “pass-times” of such skiers is running through stands of trees on fresh, deep snow.

It is extremely dangerous, as Sonny Bono and Michael Kennedy, both of whom died after crashing into trees while skiing, proved. The writer of the article says, “What you focus your eyes on becomes critical in the woods. Look at the spaces between the trees — the exits where you hope to be traveling.” Reichhelm, an expert in the sport says, “The secret is not to stare at what you don’t want to hit.”

Some years ago I talked to a pilot in the Royal Australian Air Force; he had just flown his F18 fighter jet from his base in Darwin, northern Australia, to an air-show in Auckland, New Zealand, a distance of about 5,141 kilometers (3,195 miles). He told me of the thrill of flying low (and very fast) over the great expanses of the deserts in the Northern Territories, and the State of Queensland in Australia, the area the Aussies call “The Outback” and over the Tasman Sea, the ocean that separates New Zealand and Australia.

The pilot also told me that it was necessary to focus on an imagined horizon about 20 kilometers ahead, rather that what was happening immediately in front of the aircraft. Ground control radar guided the fighter over, or ‘round objects in the immediate vicinity; his job was to keep a good lookout on the expected flight- path. Looking at the ground flashing past the jet usually causes the pilot to pass-out!    

There are so many negative things going on in the world today that if we concentrate on them and become over-whelmed by these dramatic events and we will likely succumb to the “spirit of fear” that is endemic to our age. We have 24/7 news coverage of every conceivable crisis: a pandemic running riot,  monetary, health, war, terrorism, climate change, natural disasters, Geo-political conflicts tearing whole regions apart, et al.  And there shall be signs in the sun and in the moon and in the stars; and upon the earth distress among nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring. Men’s hearts will fail them for fear and for looking upon those things which are coming on the earth; for the powers of heaven shall be shaken. Luke 21:25-26 NKJV  

Every magician knows that the secret to success is getting people to focus on what he wants them to see so that he can “trick” them with what he does not want them to see. The devil is little more than a magician who wants to fool us with the illusion of fear which he places before our eyes. He does not want us to see that he cannot fulfill what he threatens, and that ultimately he is a total failure. God will turn the dark lord’s trickery into something which will bring about God’s plan rather than thwart it.

François Fénelon, a seventeenth-century French Bishop, said, “Don t worry about the future- worry quenches the work of God within you. The future belongs to God. He is in charge of all things. Never second-guess him.”

Dr. E.Stanley Jones, the great missionary to India, wrote this in his book “Transformed by Thorns”. “I am inwardly fashioned for faith, not for fear. Fear is not my native land; faith is. I am so made that worry and anxiety are sand in the machinery of life; faith is the oil. I live better by faith and confidence than by fear, doubt and anxiety. In anxiety and worry, my being is gasping for breath — these are not my native air. But in faith and confidence, I breathe freely — these are my native air.”

How about you…are you fashioned for fear, or faith? 

For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline. 2 Timothy 1:7

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