Worship | Speed Sister

NAIROBI, KENYA - In response to me being a wee-bit late to Monday's staff worship last week (when I was scheduled to do all the week's worships), I was called to do today's thought. My sister was today's inspiration. Enjoy!

Since day one, Mom always used to say that I’d be a stockbroker on Wall Street and my sister would be an NFL linebacker. That’s not a mistake.

I’m the kind of guy who likes to sit down, read a book, study, play a game, sleep, do whatever. Ariel’s the kind of guy (no typo there) who likes to beat up boys. I drink coffee, she drinks Gatorade. In academy, I ran the school’s online fantasy football team. Ariel just ran the football team. I was a camp counselor, probably because of my exceptional dealings with kids. My sister, who’s never worked at camp, is scheduled to be a lifeguard. The buoys are already on standby.

Last year, she played basketball for 3 months on a knee that would swell up like a watermelon during the pre-game lay-up drill. After those 3 months of what the average human would describe as “nearly unbearable pain”, my dad finally forced her to go get it checked. The MRI showed she had ripped both meniscus and her ACL. She’s a dude.

Me? When I stub my toe, I’m on the injured-reserved for the rest of the week.

The difference between us is probably the most polar in our skiing style. I like to get up the mountain, stop at the top for a drink of water, and meander down the face of the hill, cutting back and forth across the slope. It’s not that I can’t go fast, or that I don’t want to, either. I just figure that since it takes a solid five minutes for the ski lift to carry us to the top, there’s no point in just rushing back down again, huh? I stop to take pictures, wait for my mom, jam on my MP3 player, just do whatever.

Ariel, on the other hand, feels that God invented downhill skis to do just one thing: go downhill. She swings off lift, makes “French fries” (as opposed to my “pizza pie”), and guns down the grade like there’s no tomorrow. She gathers speed, crouches down like she’s Peekabo Street, and it’s off. All of a sudden, snowboarders bow down, children run to their mothers, and the elderly dive for the woods. Ariel has no brakes, and she enjoys skiing like this. Move out of her way, or prepared to be lying broken and bloodied along the way.

The most horrifying thing she does literally involves 4 and 5 year olds. On any major mountain, there are “ski-school” classes for people who want to brush up on their skills, and they’re only a day class, so really, it’s a great opportunity to go out there, take the class, and gain a little more skill so the next day’s skiing can be even better. While the adults and teens are at these classes, little barely-able-to-walk kids are in their own classes, learning how to ski or ride the mountain as well. The absolute cutest sight on the slopes is to look up and see a line of 10 of these little runts, buttoned up to their neck by mom and dad, following inches behind their instructor. They fall on their butts, yea, but they just pop right back up. No fear, and the most beautiful thing you see all day.

Most skiers like to go on by the little ones, watch them and smile back on the good old days, and then pass on by. Not Ariel. When she sees a groupd of kids in front of her, cutting left and right across the hill, she aims right for the middle of the group and tries to go through them without hitting any. And she’s not very good and this sport. Usually (and I wish I could say this was a joke), there’s 3 or 4 kiddies lying on the ground when she blazes through. Then, she turns her head around, gleefully snickers at her accomplishment, and continues smoking down the mountain, looking for more victims. She’s the devil.

I don’t get a thrill out of this sort of thing. While my sister thinks my system of skiing is boring, I know in my heart that she’s wrong and I’m right, that she’s going to kill a man and that I’m going to have a great, safe day skiing. Any other human would agree that her way of skiing is horrifying, that it’s dangerous, and could very easily get her other knee dismantled. But same thing that frightens you, me, and 99% of the rest of the snow-loving world is Ariel’s life, her style, her drug. She gets down the mountain, sweat heavy on her forehead, and is always the first one to say “Ok, one more?” The very things that scare people – the speed, the altitude, the lack of control – are the very things that put joy into her life.

There are other things that scare people, too. Persecution sounds rough. I hate facing tribulation in my life, and suffering? What could be worse? But really, aren’t those the things that put joy into our lives? Romans 8:37 says “In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.” Not in spite of them, but in them, through them, with them. A true believer doesn’t have God in his life despite these things, but really, because of them.

One of these days my sister’s going to crash. I’m a bad person, so I’ll probably laugh at her and say she had it coming. But hopefully, it’ll be a crash small enough that she’s not seriously injured, but big enough that she learns how she’s putting the lives of others in jeopardy on the mountain. But I know this kid, and I know that no matter what, it won’t extinguish her fire. She’ll continue speeding down the slopes, and no matter how scary it is, she’ll keep doing it.

Shouldn’t we all be so lucky?

-cw