Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed. If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble.
Ecclesiastes 4:9–10 (NLT)
My brother-in-law, Brock, accompanied me through West Virginia and a ways past the Shenandoah’s in Virginia. I had hiked alone up until this point, and it was great to share the Appalachian Trail (AT) adventure together.
Solo hiking has its advantages and disadvantages. Some of the advantages include: enjoying all your preferences as well as your needs, savoring the solitude, setting your own times as to when to start and stop, no sorrow in losing an esteemed team member, whether to go to town or not and when and how long to stop for a rest.
Some of the advantages of team hiking are: sharing some of the pack load, having someone to talk to, to share your highpoints with, to help you with an injury, to share financial costs, to pick you up when you are down, to kick you in the butt when you get whiny, benefiting from each other’s strengths, for taking more than just selfies and making new lifelong friends.
One of the times I was especially thankful for Brock was when we were looking for a place to camp south of the Shenandoah’s. It had been a cold and windy day and it was getting colder as we drew closer to dusk. The problem was that we were on a mountain ridge where everything was covered in rocks. We would turn on our radar when we came to a somewhat level area and check some places out, but alas, each time the area would still be rock infested. Even if the rocks did not tear a hole in the tent floor, it would be like throwing all your pots, pans and lids into a tent and trying to sleep on them. ☹
At one point we came to an area that looked like there may be a spot down the side of the ridge a bit, and I told brock I would go down to check it out. Shortly after I got there and was checking around, I heard Brock yell down to me that I had better come back up. When I asked him why, he informed me that a Black Bear cub had scurried down a tree about thirty feet from me that I neither saw nor heard! I did not have to be told twice though as where there is a baby bear, there is a mama bear. I am sure you have heard the saying, “If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy!” The context you placed it in was probably different, but trust me, it goes for mama bears too! Especially mama bears!! 😊 I had no desire at all to have a conversation with an angry mama bear!
We never saw mama, but we did not stick around to see if we could either. It could have been a very different story if Brock had not broken my focus on finding us a camp by calling me off my mission.
Jesus certainly understood the advantages of Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 and team adventures. We read in Mark 6:7a, And He (Jesus) summoned the twelve (disciples) and began to send them out in pairs… (NASB95)
There is no question that the potential that two can accomplish together is far more than one could ever accomplish on his or her own. If you are like me though, the word “POTENTIAL” jumps right out at you.
If two people cannot work in agreement with one another that potential disappears faster than a backpack cover on the New Hampshire, Presidential Range during eighty plus mile per hour winds! 😊
The prophet Amos asks a great rhetorical question about this potential. Can two people walk together without agreeing on the direction? Amos 3:3 (NLT) Answer? Not even if your life depended on it!
The question at this point is, would you and I be classified as people of POTENTIAL, or better yet, people of HIGH POTENTIAL? On the potential scale, some would be hard put to get a response from it. I do not want to spend my time concentrating on them, so let’s talk about us. Here are several big things that not only register on a potential scale, but rack up some big numbers as well.
Integrity: you are true to yourself and others/honest, you are the same person in private as you are in public, in front of someone as well as behind them, on the trail as well as off the trail, you are truthful about your accomplishments on the trail and in life, and when you fail you own it.
Humility: you are not “me” focused, you are not prone to showing off or exaggerating, you have nothing to prove, you tend to struggle with knowing how to handle praise, you enjoy and even prefer serving others, helping them to succeed and it does not matter who gets credit for the accomplishments.
Hardworking: you don’t shirk your share of duties/responsibilities/ commitments, you don’t allow your feelings or circumstances to get in the way, if you are a part of a team you work at least as hard as everyone else, and you look for things to do rather than wait for someone to tell you.
Vulnerability: you exercise wisdom concerning personal and relational issues but you are real/transparent and truthful about what you do share, you are not big on wearing masks, you are able to share your weaknesses as easily as your strengths, able to share your failures as easily as your successes, you accept the fact that you will be taken advantage of at times and you predominantly engage with others to be a blessing to them rather than to build yourself up.
Forgiveness: not being able to live with yourself if you would not ask for forgiveness if you have wronged someone as well as being just as passionate to accept someone asking you for the same forgiveness.
Compassion: All the above and all that is not mentioned here must be derived from compassion, the ability to see potential in everyone being made in the image of God, the ability to project genuine hope in any situation as any of us can do all things through Christ, to sincerely believe in them as we all have the same Savior who died for us, it is not always possible, but the desire to be only helpful regardless of who the person is as we are called to show love even to our enemies.
Obviously having similar goals and objectives are important, and if we are hiking the AT it is important to have comparable abilities.
So, did we register anything on the Richter Scale concerning us being a person of potential, or better yet of “HIGH” potential? Are we one of those invaluable people that Ecclesiastes is talking about?
Maybe it would be a helpful adventure for us to team up with a high potential individual and in addition to doing our best to be a blessing to them, also hoping that they can help us to score some higher numbers on our potential Richter Scale. Who knows what kind of adventures we may have and what we may be able to accomplish together! 😊
Faith Aids 