Taking a trip is embarking on a journey. If it’s a vacation, your journey could be to the next town over or taking a world cruise. If your journey is a trip and fall, your journey may be shockingly short, moving from an upright position to a prone one, in the blink of an eye.
Have you ever tripped over your own feet? Tell me that at least once you tripped over a crack in the sidewalk and to save face you looked around like there was something huge in your path that anyone would have tripped over.
Years ago, I had some sort of issues with my feet and when I walked a familiar hiking path, the small acorns strewn on the ground hurt my feet as if they were massive rocks. Recently, the tiniest pebble dragged inside from the outdoors hurt my sock-clad foot when I stepped on it in our dining room.
I said to myself, “how could such a tiny thing hurt so much?” But it’s happened before. You shouldn’t be surprised by something little causing a bigger ruckus than its size would suggest.
What is it about the potential of little things to cause a big issue? “Nobody trips over mountains. It is the small pebble that causes you to stumble.”
Maybe it’s because we’re prepared for a mountain climb to be challenging. We’re not so prepared for a tiny hillock to give us such formidable trouble.
More than once I’ve fallen on an icy hill that in the summertime was a slight incline. We’re not prepared for little nuances to make a difference. They can.
Common sense would have us believe that to get tripped up over something, it should be something large and ominous like a mountain. But we should have noticed with experience that that’s not what usually happens. It’s the little thing.
However, just because you stumble doesn’t mean you fall. Just because you trip doesn’t mean you’re going down for the count.
In fact, the origins of the word “trip,” points to being nimble, stepping lightly, or dancing. My outdoor hiking sometimes looks, if anyone were to see, like I’m dancing all over the path.
There’s a cool scripture from Psalm 18:33 which says, “He makes me as surefooted as a deer, enabling me to stand on mountain heights.” This visual has been confirmed by various documentaries where you can see deer, mountain goats, and other four-legged types dancing without a care in the world, along what seems a treacherous mountain path to us two-legged observers.
“Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill,” they say. Obstacles come in all shapes and sizes and they’re often not obvious. Sometimes a little mole hole might as well be a gully the size of the grand canyon when you’re looking up at trees or the sky or just straight ahead; and you trip over it.
Stumbling blocks or steppingstones? I guess it’s all in how you look at things. Either way, your feet are propelling you forward. Rarely when you trip, will you fall backward.
I once fell in a crosswalk while leaving a grocery store. I was happy to wait until vehicles had passed, but a rather impatient woman, frantically waved me across while she waited at the little stop sign posted at the crosswalk. To accommodate her gesture, I trotted into the crosswalk and promptly fell over myself.
It was embarrassing to say the least. What a klutz. I didn’t know just yet, but I dropped my debit card in the hubbub of people running to the aid of the elderly woman who fell down on the road.
If she hadn’t rushed me. Or, maybe what happened after wouldn’t have had the chance to have impacted a couple of us. I got into the car and about to go to the next errand, I noticed that my debit card was missing. I went into the store to check if the remote possibility of someone turning my card into the authorities had happened. It did. A kind soul turned it in, giving them and me an opportunity to observe a good deed.
“How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news…” – Isaiah 5:2 Have you ever considered that your feet have options? Our feet can carry us forward toward a good future. They can carry us away from danger or calamity. They can assist our navigation of rocky terrain, help us to stand firm in hope of what’s next, and adjust from walking on one kind of surface to another, in an attitudinal instant.
So to finish the pebble versus mountain quote, I wish everyone the blessing that you will “pass all the pebbles in your path and you will find you have crossed the mountain.” And to you and me both, I’m hoping that when we walk, our “steps will not be hampered; and if we run, we will not stumble.” – Proverbs 4:12