I love hiking and have been very fortunate to have walked along some incredibly beautiful trails during my life. Some have been quite difficult and as the years pass by, I begin to wonder whether I’ll be able to continue tackling some of the more demanding hikes that remain on my bucket list. Hiking and the passage of time… this all got me to thinking.

I’ve scaled a few mountains over the years, when the trail proceeds upward and your body fights gravity and fatigue in order to ascend. Typically, this part of the trail takes place early on, when you have the most energy and enthusiasm. Later on, during the descent phase, gravity becomes your friend but by that point, exhaustion is a challenge and the pounding on your knees and ankles can take a toll. The dynamics of canyon hiking are different, with the beginning being all downhill and then the later stage requiring a great deal of effort to climb back upward.

I believe that we can consider our entire lives to be much like one long hike, filled with ups and downs, sunny days, stormy ones, periods of alone time, and moments of accompaniment. Some of us get to hike for many years. Sadly, some of us have trails that are much shorter. Conventional wisdom and popular culture might like us to believe that our lives have much in common with a mountain hike. In our youth and early adulthood, we ascend, filled with vigor and optimism, and strive to reach one or multiple summits. But then at some point, we cross over the top and realize that it’s now a very different type of path and that we are headed downward. We hit a peak followed by a period of descent and we might use terms such as plummet, plunge, and decline to describe what that feels like.

But as Christians, we do well to think about our lives as having more in common with a canyon hike. We were all created by a loving, creator God who sends us off onto life’s trail… which can be filled with joy, despair, accomplishment, defeat, loneliness, love, elation, and suffering. We strive to keep walking forward knowing that our quest may one day end with a return to that loving, creator God, who welcomes us back as did the father of the prodigal son. To do so is a life well lived. And in keeping with our visual metaphor here, we ascend upward in a joyous manner toward that loving father. Here, we can use descriptive words such as elevate, soar, and rise. 

Much of this is about our attitude and mindset as we consider our lives and confront our mortality. Christ taught us that he will accompany us on respective hikes, “always, until the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20) and that: “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself, so that where I am you also may be.” (John 14:2-3)

Jesus is always right there next to us, into the canyons and over the peaks, under sunny skies or across stormy seas… and he will be with us always. Our time during our lives is not about heading downward. In fact, it’s the exact opposite: we ascend and we rise.