Coco Calling No.327 - When a Moment of Reckoning Comes to Pass

My owner’s had a very curious three months. Back in July, he stepped onto the edge of a friend’s overhanging patio. It suddenly collapsed, and he fell bottom-first onto a concrete path below. Mercifully no bones were broken, but it left him on crutches for a couple of weeks afterwards.

And then, last Sunday, he went with his wife to a lovely place called ‘Waters Meet’ near Lynton, to have a training walk in readiness for climbing Mount Kilimanjaro.  The path was described as ‘challenging’ as it was quite rough and rocky, and followed the course of the East Lyn River gorge.

Well, everything seemed fine. It was a beautiful day. Some stunning toadstools were growing alongside the path. Birds were calling; the river below was ‘bubbling’ contentedly. And life was good. And yes, the path was a bit rough. It was narrow, and there were chunks of rock buried in it which were slippery. So, my owner made a point of stepping to the side of them, and anyway, -he was wearing his proper mountain boots, so what could go wrong? Well, there was a particular point where the path rose very steeply leaving a 200-foot drop to the river below. There was a slab of damp rock in the middle of the path, so my owner firmly stepped to one side of it. And then, quite inexplicably, he found himself doing a ‘salmon leap and roll’ in mid-air, before landing heavily on the slope, and starting to slide rapidly down it on his back, rather like a human toboggan. The edge of the path had suddenly collapsed beneath his boot. In such situations, instinct takes over. He flung his arms and legs out to try to get some grip, and he somehow grabbed a tiny nine-inch sapling with his left hand, which brought him to a halt. (He hadn’t seen it, but he’d miraculously felt it in his palm and so grabbed hold of it). The sapling stopped his slide, but it was then that the reality of his situation kicked in. Just below his feet, the slope became near vertical and at the bottom, there was a pile of giant boulders waiting to crush the bones of anyone that rolled down.

Well, he grimly hung on to the sapling, frightened to move. The ground beneath his feet was loose and unstable. He attempted to grab a nearby root, but it was rotten and came away in his hand. And for several moments, he felt pretty desperate. He was only about fifteen feet down from the edge of the path, but it seemed like an impossible distance. His wife assessed the options, but there weren’t really any safe ones. So, in the end, she slowly edged her way down the top of the slope and eventually managed to link wrists with my owner. This enabled him to turn over onto his front, and from there, -courtesy of the nine-inch sapling, -he was able to inch his way back up to the edge of the path. And then all was well. But it had been a very near scrape and he knew it. And when such things happen, it suddenly makes you grateful for all of the things that you so often taken for granted. Things like your health, your mobility, and the special bond that you share with a loved one. (And of course, he was very grateful for that diminutive nine-inch sapling that had decided to grow in that very spot!) And perhaps the whole incident served as a wake-up call about what my owner still needs to do in this life, and perhaps for some things that he still needs to put right while he can.

Of course, if he’d only had a set of wings like me, neither of these incidents would have posed much of a problem. But we can’t all be parrots, can we?

“In God’s economy, nothing is wasted. Every moment, every event, every experience can be used for our growth and His glory.”  

(Max Lucado: [1955-present]: Prominent American pastor, speaker and author).

“God will bring people and events into our lives, and whatever we may think about them, they are designed for the evolution of His life in us.” 

(Thomas Keating: [1923-2018]: American Trappist priest, monk and theologian).

“When I started counting my blessings my whole life turned around.”               (Willy Nelson: [1933-present]: American singer-songwriter).

“Two are better than one, because they have a good return on labour: if one of them falls down, the other can help him up.”                                                (Ecclesiastics 4:9-10a)

“Always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” 

(Ephesians 5:20)