Bridging the Gap

I’m not one of the people who likes to watch endless videos of animals doing amusing things on Facebook. I know that if I got drawn into doing that regularly, that I’d waste far too much time. However, recently I spent several minutes watching film of a panda trying to move from one structure in its enclosure to another without falling down the gap between them.

Much I hate to admit it, watching it was fascinating. The panda managed to get first one and then the second of its front paws planted firmly onto the surface it was trying to reach (which was at a lower level than the one it was starting from).  However, when it tried to move a back paw to join them, it realised that this would leave it dangerously unstable. 

At this point the animal was spread-eagled across the void between the two pieces of climbing apparatus and seemed to be stuck. It then tried to rock its weight back and get one of its front paws back to where it had come from but realised that this wouldn’t help its forward transfer, so it had another attempt at crossing the gap.

As this didn’t work, the panda tried returning one paw, then when that didn’t work, the other back paw, to where it had come from. It did manage eventually to anchor itself by one paw safely onto the first structure and the footage ended with the animal climbing down the wooden frame, presumably to cross the ground and climb onto its preferred new perch from there.  Little did it know that it would have, in time to come, a worldwide audience thanks to the reach of Facebook!

As I write, the Olympic Games are underway in Paris and I’ve been watching some of the gymnastics competitions. As I admire the skill of those competing, I wonder how many times they fell from pieces of equipment when they first took up the sport, long before they’d perfected their technique.

Watching them now even with their years of training and experience can be quite nerve racking, perhaps particularly so when they compete on the asymmetric bars. I can’t imagine how much courage it must take to throw yourself upwards and backwards from the high bar without being able to see a landing point, then snatch at the lower bar and be ready immediately to rotate into a perfect handstand.

How often do we feel we’re being thrown around by life with very little to cling onto? How difficult it can be in the middle of a crisis to identify anything which might be an anchor point. If we do spot one, do we always have the courage to reach out towards it and how secure will it be? Will it hold our weight and the weight of all we carry with us from day to day? How often do we, like the panda I watched, over reach ourselves and then have to perform what feels like a humiliating climbdown?

Growing spiritually, for me, is a process of catching hold of something to which I feel I’ve been led: sometimes clinging onto it tightly until my confidence grows and then, sometimes having to let it go and reach towards something else. I may not be able to see the ‘something else’ very clearly and I might feel like the gymnast on those asymmetric bars, or even the panda straddling the void but I’m sure of Jesus as my anchor point.

I know that I’m loved, held and supported by Jesus and that even though I began my journey of faith comparatively late in life and without the years of practice that others have had, I will be given everything I need to face whatever obstacles lay ahead and will be able to move from one to another at the right time and at the right pace, even if that involves moving in some unexpected directions.

I may not do that as elegantly as the gymnasts in Paris do but I have confidence that I’m slightly nearer the podium than that poor panda!