Living a little under a mile from the church where I serve as pastor, I often walk to the office in the morning to get some exercise. I’ve discovered that listening to an audiobook along the way makes the walk shorter and less routine. There are, after all, only so many ways to get there from here.
I’m currently in the middle of listening to an audiobook about Derick Lugo, a 20-something guy from New York City who decided to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail—a city kid who never backpacked a day in his life.
He quickly learned the trail is fraught with trial!
Quickly. As in the day he began.
The official southern starting point for the AT is located on Springer Mountain in Georgia. To get to that point, though, Derick did what most hikers do. Beginning at the Amicalola Falls State Park visitors center, he walked through the stone archway and followed the 8.5-mile approach trail to Springer Mountain.
“Take the left trail up the steps. It’s far easier,” someone told Derick.
Since he heard that the approach trial itself is challenging, Derick reasoned the steps were a good alternative. After all, what’s a few steps?! They proved to be but the first trial of his thru-hike—and he hadn’t even reached the official trailhead!
“These steps are murder!” he exclaimed twenty minutes later. And that was after just the first set of steps. He should’ve known. Before the steps began, a sign read, “Difficulty: Strenuous! 175 steps.”
With those behind him, he reached another sign: “Difficulty: Strenuous! 425 steps.”
A total of 600 steps to climb with a 40-lb pack on the back of a city boy who never carried a pack before and typically used the elevator. That’s a trial.
Merely his first trail trial.
And yet he kept going with an eye toward Mt. Katahdin.
Trials Are Part of It
I don’t read a ton of hiking books, but likely more than the average person. One thing I’ve noticed, regardless of the hike—the hiker, the length of the trail, the part of the world the trail navigates—every one of them involves trials for the hiker.
Some are minor, like 600 steps for a flatlander. Or a shelter mouse scrambling over one’s arm in the middle of the night. Or trudging through ankle-deep muck after three continuous days of rain. Or another blister.
Some are more difficult to deal with and may even spell the end of the trail. Acute tendonitis, a sprained ankle, giardia (a parasitic infection from tainted water), hypothermia, a broken limb.
Some end in tragedy. 66-year-old Geraldine Largay made the fatal decision to hike the last couple hundred miles of the AT alone after her partner had to leave the trail. Geraldine didn’t have a very good sense of direction, so when she ventured off the trail for a restroom break, she couldn’t find her way back. For the last thirty days of her life, she made several unsuccessful attempts to find the trail, but eventually became too weak. Confined to her tent, she jotted a few goodbye notes, resigning herself to an inevitable end.
“When you find my body, please call my husband George and my daughter Kerry. It will be the greatest kindness for them to know that I am dead and where you found me — no matter how many years from now.”
Two years later, her remains were found.
The Trail of Life
“Life is a journey,” we’re often told. The slogan turns up on coffee mugs, t-shirts, bumper stickers.
In that vein, I’ve written before comparing life to a thru-hike along a challenging, seemingly endless trail. And one thing’s for certain that every hiker will tell you. No matter how well you study, plan, and prepare, there will be trials on the trail. It’s inevitable.
This is no less true for the Christian.
To be sure, the obedient Christian may be able to avoid certain kinds of trials—those associated with or the direct consequence of sinful behavior.
For example, avoiding the sin of drunkenness prevents the trial of a DUI or alcohol-induced cirrhosis of the liver. Avoiding sexual promiscuity greatly diminishes, and virtually eliminates, the contraction of an STD. Overcoming greed and the love of money will keep a person out of prison for embezzlement.
But Christians aren’t immune to trials. In fact, we should expect them.
In his first letter, Peter understands this reality. He acknowledges his readers “have been distressed by various trials.” [1 Peter 1:6]
So “trail trials” come in all kinds of shapes and sizes.
They can affect us individually, personally, in such a way that no one else may ever know.
They can affect a marriage…a family…an extended family…a friendship…a circle of friends.
As we’ve all experienced, “trail trials” take numerous forms, as well.
- Sickness & disease…chronic or acute
- Debilitating injury
- A catastrophic accident or disaster
- A traumatic event—or series of events
- Job loss…financial setback
- Conflict at home…at work…in the family network
- Incessant stress of an overwhelmed life, day after day
- Persecution or marginalization or ridicule for your faith
Sometimes Christians wrongly think we must be above being bothered by these things, but Peter is more of a Christian realist. Let’s be honest and agree with him.
Trials distress us in any number of ways, and often in more ways than one!
- Physical pain
- Emotional Pain
- Psychological harm
- Anxiety
- Confusion
- Uncertainty
- Fear
- Relational disruption
- Sleeplessness
- Stress
- Chaos
- Discouragement, despair…even depression.
We are distressed in some way when facing the journey’s many trials. Peter acknowledges the universal reality.
But he doesn’t leave us to wallow in distress! Instead, he turns our attention to a couple of things trials do for the Christian that are actually beneficial!
Here’s the larger context of what he said:
In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
– 1 Peter 1:6–7 (ESV)
So as distressing as a trial may be, the Christian can still rejoice.
“In this you greatly rejoice,” he wrote, “though now…you have been distressed by various trials.”
Rejoice in what?? There’s been this woeful diagnosis…a terrible tragedy…
What the Christian can rejoice in—regardless of what the trail throws at him or her—are the wonderful expressions of God’s saving grace: the divine work of election and the miracle of the new birth (vv. 2-3)…the provision of a hope that no one can take away (v. 3b)…the promise of a guaranteed, secure eternal inheritance (v. 4)…the power of secure preservation (v. 5).
So, while we aren’t masochists, jubilant about or exceedingly glad over the trials (they do indeed distress us as they would anyone else!) in the distress we are exceedingly glad over God’s gracious saving work that transcends and outlasts every trial!
And as distressing as a trial may be, the Christian can also look beyond it a bit and acknowledge a divine purpose in it, namely the testing of the genuineness of one’s faith in Jesus.
Notice that saving faith in Jesus Christ is itself priceless! It is so because it’s a gracious gift of God (see Ephesians 2:8-9) that is crucial for the soul’s salvation unto eternal life ( cf. v. 9 – “the end of your faith—the salvation of your souls.”).
And just to clarify how precious this faith is, if you possess it, for how much would you sell it?
Right. Nothing.
And the thing about trail trials is they serve to test the reality of that faith and actually refine it.
So the person who claims to be a Christian but chucks it all when one of those various trials comes along (that is admittedly very difficult to bear) proves that his claim was quite hollow.
Sort of like the professing thru-hiker who gets up the first 175 steps at Amicalola Falls, sees the sign for 425 more, takes off his pack, turns around and goes home. Sort of like that.
The person of genuine faith instead turns to his Heavenly Father for help, relief, strength and patience to endure, and so on. And keeps going.
There’s a refining process in our trials, too. Sometimes our faith picks up some dross that needs to be burned away by the fire of a trail trial.
For example, if somehow I buy into the notion that God wants me to be happy all the time, free from cares and troubles, healthy, and wealthy, He’ll see to it that a trial burns that nonsense right out of my faith.
And then I can keep pressing on the trail with a far better expectation of what lies ahead. Some amazing scenery, perhaps. Some exciting adventures. Some breathless satisfaction.
Some trail trials.
