Unsafe to Save
We shouldn't expect helping others to be easy. But it is fulfilling.
The first successful summiting of Everest, which reaching to 29,035 feet is the world’s tallest mountain, was accomplished in 1953 by Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay. Since that time, about 3,000 people have made it to the top, but some 200 climbers have also died either on the way up or on the way back down.
This past May a Briton, David Sharp, froze to death near the summit while 40 other mountaineers passed by without attempting to help him. Such behavior is often accepted in the harsh conditions of high mountaineering when the fallen person is deemed too far gone to be saved, and the possibility exists that others could die attempting to help the victim.
Then there are the details of a rescue that occurred on Mount Everest on the morning of May 26 less than 1,000 feet from the summit. At that time, American guide Daniel Mazur abandoned his own trek toward the highest point on the planet to save another climber who had been left for dead. Mazur, who had reached the top of Everest once before, had with him two paying clients and a Sherpa guide.
The climber in trouble was 50-year-old Australian Lincoln Hall who had been left for dead on the mountain by his own team the previous night. Hall had made it to the summit the day before but became seriously ill from oxygen deprivation on the way back down. The two Sherpa guides accompanying him tried to help him, but eventually had to leave to save themselves.
Hall was declared dead, but when Mazur and his team found him the next morning, he was sitting up, despite having spent the night in the frigid, thin air without food, sleeping bag, gloves, hat or oxygen bottles. After discovering Hall, Mazur’s team gave him food, liquids and oxygen, and began working to bring him down the mountain. Their decision to aid the fallen mountaineer meant that none of Mazur’s team would make it to the top of the world on that trip. They had expended too much energy at that life-sapping altitude to complete their own summit bid.
By the way, while Mazur and his group were helping Hall, two Italian climbers passed by on their trek to the top. When Mazur asked them to help, they claimed not to understand English. Later, back at base camp, that was discovered not to be true! Hall suffered from frostbite to his fingers and toes, and had some pulmonary edema and a chest infection when he was brought down from the peak, but is steadily recovering thanks to the unselfish efforts of some strangers acting as friends.
Jesus often reminds us in the Gospels that his followers shouldn’t expect helping others to be easy. But often we make decisions based on that false assumption. We prioritize the kind of help to others that is convenient and find in it our fulfillment, while our Christian duty isn’t fulfilled at all. Just our misguided conscience.
Anyone can love others who love them back, Jesus said. But Christian love is showing kindness to people who aren’t kind to you. Anyone can give help when it’s the right time and the right place and they have the right resources in hand. But Christian help takes up a cross and endures hardship in order to help others. “You are not far from the kingdom of God,” Jesus said to religious teachers who considered the possibility that such merciful action is defined by Jesus as more religious than thinking you are doing your Christian duty just by going to church (Mark 12:34).
I have a note in my Bible next to the parable of the Good Samaritan that says, “It is in our neighbor that God would be loved by us.” You could also say the same thing differently, “It is through us that God loves our neighbor.” The ultimate love of God, of course, is the sacrifice of his one and only Son on the cross for the world’s sins. Those who have trouble believing this, or come up confused from a whirling mass of misinformation about forgiveness, or live in a guilt trip haunted by their inadequacies … these are the people who see God’s Good Samaritan love through the window of our Good Samaritan love. If we’re willing to take action …
Love someone today. Someone whose needs are so out of the way that they can’t help but notice God’s love.
PRAYER: Your sacrificial love and out-of-the-way kindness for me is what saves me, Jesus, and what strengthens me to help others. I am difficult to love. Yet you won’t give up on me. Give me your eyes to look with compassion and kindness on those who need my help that is difficult to give. Shuffle my priorities into the proper order so that I fulfill your will and make it my greatest pleasure. Amen.