Climbing Snowdon

Yesterday Judy and I climbed Snowdon in the Welsh national park of Snowdonia. At 3,560 feet, Snowdon is the highest mountain in Great Britain outside the Scottish Highlands. We wanted to climb from the trailhead at Pen-y-Pass but the car park was full. I had researched the routes up and believed that this was the only way for us to go. A full car park was very disappointing. Although we came to Wales for a retreat with Mike Endicott, I had wanted to scale Snowdon. I had a few words with God.

Then I remembered (or God reminded me) that there was another route up the mountain from the center of the nearby village, Llanberis. We drove there, found plenty of parking spaces, a well-marked trail, and began to climb. This route, one of seven different ways to get to the summit, is the longest (about 5 miles up) and the one with the greatest elevation gain (the map I have says about 3000 feet) but called, in the guidebook, the most gentle. This same guidebook says that to climbing aficionados this is not considered a sufficiently difficult route to be taken seriously (??).

Yikes. It was brutal, at least for me. All up – no ‘down’ stretches where you could catch your breadth. Some parts were a quarter mile or so of stone steps. Judy commented to a man heading back down that the trail was the ultimate stair master. There are no trees on this mountain (see photos on the post ‘Climbing Snowdon – Photos’ or this link: https://goo.gl/photos/eCAKiFpRWM1Sybbo9).

Pretty much bare rock and low shrubs and grasses. That means you can look up and see the trail far ahead, climbing inexorably, high above you. I could see the people on the trail – tiny little specs trudging up the same path. I thought “there is no way I can get to where they are”. Many times I felt too discouraged to continue. It was hard work.

But something drove me onward and upward in spite of the difficulty especally my aching joints. All around me were spectacular views. And Judy and I were doing it together. She was constant in her encouragement and strength. We shared jokes with people that passed us as well as the ones coming down. “Are we there yet” was probably the most common quip. Over and over again the descending hikers would tell us “just 20 more minutes to the top”. That also became a joke among us still climbing. We know they meant well. Maybe it was 20 minutes going downhill, but it was more like an hour for us heading up.

It took perseverance, confidence, and required me, at least, to push myself. But, miraculously, we made it to the top. And as with most things, it was the journey, not the culmination (the summit) that mattered. Yes, I felt a sense of accomplishment when I stood on the summit. But along the path God met me continuously. First, He really did give me the strength I needed to put one foot in front of the other. Second, He gave me the will to continue on the way up; to not quit. Third, He waged war with me against what I call the ‘spirit of infirmity’. The enemy tried over and over again to harm me physically on this mountain. First, my arm; then my neck and shoulders; finally he hit me in my ankle. More than half way up I took a step and a sharp pain shot through my left ankle. It felt exactly like a serious sprain but I hadn’t twisted the ankle on anything. This continued for several more steps. My experience is that muscle, ligament, or tendon pain with no obvious cause can be a spiritual attack.

As I walked I rebuked the spirit of infirmity and commanded it to leave my left ankle. (I have found it necessary to be specific to name the part of my body). I prayed “ankle be healed”. After a few minutes the pain left and did not return.

I also had the feeling that Snowdon was a high point claimed by dark spiritual forces. So as I walked I prayed the blood of Jesus over the entire mountain and all who were on it that day. I am guessing that I was the only one on the mountain that day praying that prayer. Looking back on the day, I think this is one reason God wanted me to climb the mountain.

Did I say that a cog railway chugs up the mountain and terminates at the summit? Judy and I decided that we would take the train back down the mountain. I was not looking forward to the stresses I would put on my knees going back the way we came up. The only problem was the trains were coming up and going down full because it was such a beautiful day, at least for Wales. But when I asked God what to do I felt Him say “take the train”. “But God the trains are full”, I told Him. He said “take the train, I will make a way”. So, I found the guy who sold the tickets at the top and he told me that maybe we could get on the 4:30 train but he wouldn’t know for sure until 4:00. “OK”, I said, “sign us up”. Somehow we got on the 4:00 train. It was very mysterious. We got the last two seats (we were in effect standby passengers). The train had come up full. I don’t know what happened to the two people whose seats we got. We only found out that they were missing when we talked with their fellow passengers as we were already on the way down.

The ride down takes about an hour. We were sitting next to an older couple from Canada. The man apparently was a well-known architect in Ontario who had just retired. His wife intimated that he was having a difficult time making the adjustment to this new stage of his life. They asked us about the climb up and I told them basically what I have written here. He said “there is an old saying – the Welshman went up a hill and came down a mountain’”. I was too tired to respond. Then he said that “when I come to England they ask me if my accent is American. I am greatly offended. I tell them ‘certainly not, I am Canadian’”. Nice!! I didn’t respond but I began to get the impression in my spirit that he didn’t like America and therefore he didn’t like any American that he met. I have encountered this type of resentment in a few Canadians before but, again, I let it pass.

We (I say ‘we’, I really mean Judy) drove safely back to the cottage where we were staying. Hallelujah!!! I went to bed early. I was ‘shattered’ as they say over here, but woke up at 12:30 AM due, I guess, to jet lag. For the next hour I played out over and over in my mind what I could have said to him that would have ‘put him in his place’. Instead I told myself I just let him run right over me. “What a jerk”, I thought.

And he was an angry man. He did resent America, and therefore lumped all Americans into the single category – ‘the other’. I have learned that a spirit of resentment, if left unchecked, can grow into a spirit of contempt, and, over time, contempt can even morph into hatred. In my heart I saw that his attitude toward America, and therefore in his mind – me, was not too dissimilar (at least in principle, not in magnitude) to a German in Germany in 1936 saying to a particular Jewish man or woman “you Jews are all the same”. Out of this spirit comes great evil.

But around 1:30 AM God interrupted my thoughts. He told me to pray for this man. At first my prayer was for him to feel ashamed about how he treated me. But God quickly corrected that. I was to pray for his heart to be healed and for me to understand about ‘the unoffendable heart’ – my heart.

We all inherit the spirit of rejection, as I have written before; we are after all the spiritual descendants of Adam. This man was struggling with the spirit of rejection (not helped by retirement), which he compensated for by finding targets for his sense of unworthiness. America was an easy target for him and over the years this grew into resentment of individual Americans, even if he did not know them. His devaluing caused him to dehumanize others. And I was offended!

My fleshly reaction was to strike back – tit for tat. This would have intensified and validated his resentment and we could have easily had a serious argument on that train. God showed me early in the morning, hours after my encounter with this man, that the only way forward is for me, the Christian, to not be offended by his words; in other words, to have the unoffendable heart and to love him, at least to see into his heart and pray for him. Do you know how hard that is? Of course you do. In my power, this is impossible; I can only do this in the power of the Holy Spirit.  God showed me something else. The unoffendable heart that He wants me to have grows out of my choice to live in the Kingdom of God every day, which includes not just an unoffendable heart, but also a repentant heart.

This is really difficult. I battle against the flesh every day. I wage war against the spirits of condemnation, shame, and discouragement. I fight to make the right choices. God is with me, but I have to put one foot in front of the other, spiritually speaking. Sometimes I feel ‘shattered’, but there is beauty along the way and I am on the  journey with others who will encourage and support me.

And this, I think, is the real meaning of climbing Snowdon.

Looking back on the day, if we had been able to park at Pen-y-Pass I would have had to walk down. My knees would be hurting and I would not have learned about the lesson about the unoffendable heart on the train because the train does not go to Pen-y-pass. God is continually showing me on this trip that He is faithful, trustworthy, and knows much better than I do what is best for me. He is my Provider; Jesus is my Provision. He wants me to be completely dependent on Him for all things – a good definition of humility. And this also is hard, but with His Spirit, not impossible.

Hallelujah!!!