A group of botanists went on an expedition into a hard-to-reach location in the Alps, searching for new varieties of flowers. One day as a scientist looked through his binoculars, he saw a beautiful, rare species growing at the bottom of a deep ravine. To reach it, someone would have to be lowered into that gorge. Noticing a local boy standing nearby, the man asked him if he would help them get the flower. The boy was told that a rope would be tied around his waist and the men would then lower him to the floor of the canyon. Excited yet apprehensive about the adventure, the boy peered thoughtfully into the chasm. "Wait," he said, "I'll be back," and off he dashed. When he returned, he was accompanied by an older man. Approaching the head botanist, the boy said, "I'll go over the cliff now and get the flower for you, but this man must hold onto the rope. He's my dad!”

I’ve found myself in these days, when we haven’t been able to do church as we used to, feeling like I’m hanging over a chasm, reaching for a rare flower. For me that flower is a new way of pastoring and loving others and reaching people for Jesus. I’m having to use online platforms  that in many ways feels uncomfortable and scary at times. 

All of us have to reach for flowers that are in unfamiliar places and in unconventional ways.

But we’re not the first Christians to have to adjust to new ways of counting for Jesus and advancing his Kingdom.

• Paul had to learn to minister from a prison cell.

• The Christians in Acts were scattered to unknown places.

• Chinese Christians had to go underground.

Throughout history, for the sake of the Gospel, Christians have had to learn to use secret codes, underground caverns, fake identities and more. After writing about the well-known heroes of the faith — like Abraham and Joseph — the writer of Hebrews adds…

“And what more shall I say? … Women received back their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated— of whom the world was not worthy—wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.” Hebrews 11: 32-38

I stop feeling sorry for myself when I consider what they went through. But that was their canyon. This is ours. It’s different, but it still needs faith.

Here we are, stretched over a canyon, reaching for a rare flower — a creative and new way for the Gospel to thrive in our time and despite our limitations.

And who’s got the rope? Our faithful Father. If he’s for us, who can be against us? But more than that, Christ, himself is our rope. His life, death and resurrection have secured us in the hands of God, and as we swing out over our canyon, we are safe and secure in the arms of Jesus. We can’t lose.

As Isaac Watts the great hymn writer from the 1700s wrote:

Give me the wings of faith to rise

Within the veil, and see

The saints above, how great their joys,

How bright their glories be.

Once they were mourning here below,

And wet their couch with tears:

They wrestled hard, as we do now,

With sins, and doubts, and fears.

I ask them whence their victory came:

They, with united breath,

Ascribe their conquest to the Lamb,

Their triumph to His death.