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The last few weeks I've been wanting to go to the top of the 275m high smokestack (chimney) at the power station where I was doing vacation work. Today was my last day, and I decided that there was no way I could procrastinate any longer. I asked Leo, a fellow vacation work student to go up with my.
Leo is not a big fan of heights. In his words, being high up "trips a switch inside of me which I really don't want to be tripped". He agreed, however, and the two of us donned hard hats and overalls before heading for the smokestack.
The outside structure of the smokestack is fairly large, between 25 and 30 metres in diameter. Inside of the concrete structure, three large tubes which contain the hot gases run all the way to the top. Along the inside wall on one side, there is a lift which also goes all the way to the top. On the other side are stairs.
Naturally we headed for the lift first. It is a typical industrial cage lift, and I spent about a minute trying to figure out which buttons to press before Leo pointed something out: the lift was locked.
I was still keen on reaching the top, so I immediately headed for the stairs. I hadn't put foot on the first step before I was being accused of insanity. After a bit of persuading, however, there were two people trudging up the stairs, counting the number of steps.
One hundred, two hundred - Leo was becoming less convinced of how good an idea it was. Four hundred - we were both getting rather sweaty and out of breath. By five hundred Leo didn't want to quit, but I refused to go back down. I would reach the top even if I did it alone. When we reached step seven hundred, we took a breather. This was supposed to be past halfway according to our calculations. The thousandth step called for another breather. We had gone further in one stint than I thought we were capable of, and we could see the light at the top - far away, but clearly closer than the light at the bottom.
The next 420 steps passed very quickly - we could feel the cool draft and natural light from above was filtering down to us. In no time we were climbing the short ladder out to the top of the smokestack.
The view was phenomenal. Having come so far, the overcast skies did not matter, it was just too beautiful. The cooling towers, which are massive in their own right, were far below us and looking rather small. The long walk up the stairs had definitely been worth it. Giving up halfway would have been easy - less sweaty, less ash, fresher legs - but we would not have received the reward.
It reminds me of what Paul was talking about in Phillipians 3:12-14. "I keep striving to win the prize for which Christ Jesus has already won me to himself. ... The one thing I do is to forget what is behind me and do my best to reach what is ahead. So I run straight towards the goal in order to win the prize, which is God's call through Christ Jesus to the life above."
Nothing worthwhile is easy to achieve. Resisting temptation, sharing Jesus with others, following Him in our daily lives - these things don't always come easily. The world is constantly trying to pull us away from Christ's way. My prayer is that we will keep our eyes focused on Jesus so that we will run straight towards the goal, so that we can spend eternity together with Jesus.
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