So I sit at a table with three ladies and one gentlemen, most of whom are probably close to twice my age - some more and some less.  Wonderful folks.  We got to talking about one of our members who had surgery last week, and how she was from Colorado, and people were sharing memories of trips to that beautiful state.  One of the ladies brought up the beautiful mining country of southwestern Colorado, dotted with tiny, hopeful towns in the midst of intimidatingly huge mountains.  Silverton.  Ouray.  Telluride. 

I asked if they knew the history of the name Telluride, and they indicated they didn't.  I told them that when I was driving Jeeps on 4x4 trips back and forth through the mountain passes in that area, someone explained that the quickest way down from the mines high in the mountains, to the town in the valley below, was on a type of zip line.  They would set up a load on a cable, and one of the miners would ride down with it to the valley below.  As the load (and miner) were pushed on their descent, the miners behind would yell To Hell you ride!  

Wikipedia disagrees with this source for the name, but I find it far more interesting all the same.  There is something far more beautiful about the defiance of a band of smelly, dirty, desperately hopeful men holding out for beauty and riches in the midst of a brutal climate and dangerous mountain passes.

My week began with a trip back to the county jail.  A wonderful time of sharing, teaching, and praying with men incarcerated for things I don't know about.  The next day was a flight to Las Vegas to catch up with a high school buddy after his retirement from the Navy.  Wednesday I was back in town, racing to catch up with everything for the weekend.  Saturday I was in the ER visiting with someone ill from a few too many aspirin.  Not enough to kill, but enough to scream for help.  This afternoon I spoke with them by phone from the observation facility where they'll spend the next few days, being assessed, having doctors and other - God-willing, highly competent people - try and figure out the help this person needs to better live their life in hope rather than despair.

In between, I spent time talking with a man battling his own demons of doubt and uncertainty, of anger and frustration with the world and a life that never seemed to materialize for him the way it did for others.  A man who I trust believes in a God who loves him, created him, redeemed him.  But whose belief is tempered by the disappointment and frustration of powers beyond his control that have driven his life this way and that, seemingly without reason or rhyme, a sailboat in the grips of irresistible winds, without even a rudder to steer with.  He voiced repeatedly in several encounters this week his desire to trust this God, but his uncertainty, his doubt, and his frustration with being unable to have his questions answered for certain, to have all of the doubt laid aside and put to rest once and for all.  He wants a faith more solid and certain than anything else in his life has apparently been, and he is angry that he seems expected to trust once again, when whatever trust he's had never seems to have panned out.

What to tell someone like that?  Someone honest enough about their brokenness?  A man not unlike Gideon in that respect, perhaps.  Uncertain, but desiring certainty.  Wanting God to meet him in the midst of his uncertainty, to dispel his doubts, to prove to him beyond his own ability to doubt.  A man on the ledge of mountains where his life has been dashed one too many times, clutching on to a thin cable and unable to throw himself off on that long ride to wherever.  

I don't have the answers to his doubts.  To the men in the prison who share with blank faces the sorrows of their family and their lives outside.  To the friend in the grips of despair and depression so deep that they can't ever believe it could get any better than death.  I don't have the answers.  The fleece now drenched, now dry.  I don't have the ability to assure them that the long ride to the valley below will be safe and smooth.  It hasn't been given to me to provide that sort of knowledge about the future.  Theirs or mine.  

All I can do is launch myself along that small thin thread.  Not so much by my strength or force of will, but by generation after generation of others who launched themselves similarly and passed their stories down to me.    Who handed me what has been handed to others, a lifeline that seems impossibly frail compared to the overwhelming struggles and powers around me.  By the truth that echoes in their words in ways I can't pin down, but simply know.  But launched by that innumerable host, I grip, eyes closed, teeth gritted.  It looks some days like to hell I ride.  But I choose to hope that this is not the case.  To hope that the cable holds, the trust bears true, and that He who is within me truly is greater than that which surrounds me - including myself.  

I can't answer all the questions that are asked of me, or that I ask myself.  But the choice seems either to stay in the mines, waiting for the soft winter snow to fall and bury.  Or to hope.  To trust.  To be launched, and to live each second as though the line will hold, and my feet will be brought to solid ground once and for all.  May this be so.  For me.  For the men in jail.  For the friend seeking a new direction in life.  For the person seeking freedom from the ghosts that haunt them.  And for Gideon, waiting for his fleece.