Inspiration Point!
A week ago I relived that fateful day now half a century ago.

Eileen and I took a few days in the Blue Mountains for our wedding anniversary.
The weather was glorious; cold but glorious. Every day found us out and about on another of the beautiful walks the Blue Mountains are famous for.
On that day, a week ago, our walk took us to Inspiration Point.

When I was a kid, my grandfather had a cottage at Leura, and our family would regularly spend our holidays there. Later, when I was a teenager, my parents built their own holiday house only a few doors away.
I loved it. I loved the atmosphere, I loved the family times together.
I loved the walks.

One of our regular walks took us across the Leura Golf Course, keeping an eye out for flying golf balls (there was no resort there in those days), then through the bush to Inspiration Point. From there you look down on the grandeur of the Jamison Valley 1300 feet below, and across to Wentworth Falls and Kings Tableland beyond.

But especially fascinating, at least to me as a teenager, was that here was the head of the dreaded Roberts Pass  – “dreaded” not because of any connection to the Dread Pirate Roberts, but because initial access down the first cliff face was by means of a ladder, originally made of wood, but now long since fallen to pieces. Petitions made to the Blue Mountains City Council in the 1960s to have it replaced had been to no avail.

It was the long weekend in October 1969.
I was 20 and on holidays with my parents and my younger sister. It was a pleasant Sunday afternoon and I set off for a pleasant Sunday afternoon’s stroll in shorts, shoes, a tee shirt and a light jumper.
I walked to Inspiration Point.
And, Roberts Pass!

The sight of that broken ladder luring me into the valley below was too much. I succumbed, clambered down what was left of the ladder to pick up the overgrown “trail” below.
Half way down those massive sheer cliffs you normally find a tree lined ledge. If he were still with us my good friend, Frank Stoffels, would have loved to explain this geological phenomenon.
Snaking along these tree lined ledges you’d normally find a rough trail – like the Federal Pass below Katoomba and the magnificent National Pass (now closed after a brief reopening) below Wentworth Falls.

Here too, half way down Roberts Pass to the valley floor, there was a trail.
It was getting late in the afternoon, but I couldn’t resist leaving the ill defined “track” I was on to explore at least a little way along this new trail. It wove in and out, first round a bend, then into a gully, then into another bend and gully.
In my enthusiasm for exploring a new trail, it didn’t occur to me to count how many bends and gullies I had passed.

Then I decided to turn back.
But when I got back to where I thought Roberts Pass should be, it was not there. In any case it was so overgrown I would have had little hope of finding where I had left it.
In vain I started up one gully after another, each time only to reach another dead end.
It was getting dark. I gave up.
I would spend the night in the bush.

Once my initial feeling of panic subsided I told myself I would probably get out, somehow, in the morning. But I was worried and, needless to say, I didn’t sleep that night.
My biggest concern though was for my parents and sister back home who, I knew, would be getting worried.

Thankfully that early Spring night was not very cold.
A near full moon rose and bathed the valley below in a beautiful glow.
I was so exhilarated that, about 2 am, I sang “How great Thou art” at the top of my voice, confident that no one would tell me to shut up – as often happens when people hear me sing.

Early the next morning my father had been to the police, but they told him they would do nothing till I had been missing for 24 hours. (I thought they only said that in the movies.)
So he went to a neighbour who was a scout master, who then called out his scouts to look for me.

Meanwhile, at first light, I thought about what to do. I even contemplated descending all the way into the valley, and crossing to Sublime Point where I could see what might be a possible way to the top of the cliffs.
But as appealing as that looked, I knew that once I descended all the way to the valley floor (even if I could get there) I would probably get lost in the thick bush; and even if I didn’t, would there even be any way up at Sublime Point?

I tried to find Roberts Pass again, but without success.
Eventually, I found a gully that looked promising and, after a good deal of clambering and a bit of rock climbing, I eventually reached the upper tree line. I didn’t know where I was, but finally I was safe.
The golf course covers much of the plateau up there, so I knew if I kept going up through the bush I had to find it.
And I did.

Epilogue:

I was crossing the golf course, not far from home, when I heard a faint voice from way back in the bush calling my name. I realised then that someone was out looking for me, so I went back into the bush, in the direction of the voice, to tell them I was O.K.
I came across a maybe 10 year old boy, a cub scout who, when me saw me, cried wide eyed, “Is your name Ken?” I told him, “Yes” – at which point he immediately abandoned me, and ran off shouting excitedly, “I found him, I found him.”

I got home to face a well deserved reprimand from my father, and another, gentler one, from my sister; and ice cream from my mother.

Inspiration and Revelation

Last week, when we were back at Inspiration Point, Eileen asked me what I had learned. She thought, maybe not a lot because I still like to go off exploring every little bypath that I see to find out where it leads.
In fact, it wasn’t all that long ago we were on a walk with my older sister and her husband, when I saw a track off to our left. “I won’t be long,” I said, “I’ll just see where this leads.”
“Why does he do that?” my brother-in-law asked Eileen when I was gone.
“I don’t know,” Eileen replied, “he just likes to see where it goes.”

This is true, I am incurably curious.
When I go for a paddle in my kayak, I spend as much time exploring little tributaries as I do on the river. When I go for a ride on my bike I find it hard to resist finding out where every new side track leads.

This is not all bad. Curiosity is a gift given to us by God.
From the beginning God wanted us to explore this wonderful world of His.
In the beginning God told us to “fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen 1:28), to “tend the garden and keep it” (Gen 2:15), to classify all living creatures by bringing to Adam “every beast of the field and every bird of the air, to see what he would call them” (Gen 2:19).
Curiosity is a gift given to us by God.

But, He didn’t mean for the cat to get killed, or for us to lose ourselves, in the process.

Missing the wood for the trees

We live in a world that continually distracts us from our original purpose.
Sometimes this is relatively harmless, such as when Eileen visits the shops, or when I find a side track leading off somewhere in the bush and don’t get lost.

I don’t believe you have to “fill [every] unforgiving minute with sixty seconds’ worth of distance run” – if you do you’re more likely to be OCD than to “be a Man”.
But in this age of (as Neil Postman put it) “amusing ourselves to death” it is easy to waste inordinate amounts of the limited time God has given us on this earth.

Even worse though is the person who becomes so obsessed with exploring and trying to understand the minutiae of the created world around them that they miss seeing the Creator.
The “profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called” (1 Tim 6:20 KJV) of those who are constantly looking for the reason, behind the reason, behind the reason, behind everything, never discover The Real Reason behind everything: God!
While they are busy searching down every rabbit hole for a Unified Theory of Everything they miss the One “by whom all things hold together” (Col 1:17).
“Always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim 3:7), they  become “futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts darkened” (Rom 1:21).

Keep your focus in life.
“Lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith” (Heb 12:1-2).

Accept what you don’t know

Also it is important to accept what we don’t know. We are not God, we can’t know everything.

Perhaps in the new heavens and new earth we will have an eternity to fulfil the original Creation Mandate and explore the new earth to our heart’s content.

But for the limited time of the present we live in a broken earth with broken ladders and overgrown trails – and we must accept our limitations whether they be physical or temporal.

There is much we don’t know.
There is nothing wrong with exploring; God has created us to do so.
But I can’t know everything and I don’t have time to search down every rabbit hole.

But this I do know: “I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that Day.” (2 Tim 1:12)

I do not know what lies ahead,
The way I cannot see;
Yet One stands near to be my guide,
He’ll show the way to me:

            I know Who holds the future, and He’ll guide me with his hand.
            With God things don’t just happen; everything by Him is planned.
            So as I face tomorrow, with its problems large and small,
            I’ll trust the God of miracles, give to Him my all.
                           – Alfred B. Smith

And, in the words of the Bill Gaither song: “Because I know He holds the future, I can face tomorrow.”