Imagine yourself climbing to the top of a 35-foot-tall telephone pole with nothing but a harness around you and a rope tethering you to another post. With evenly spaced metal links to use as handholds and footholds, your job is to climb up so you can either sit or stand on top of the pole. Then, once situated safely, your last task is to propel yourself from the pole to a trapeze hung from a hefty tree branch in hopes of grabbing it.

If all this sounds a bit like acrobatics, it is. Iif all this sounds a bit out of your comfort zone, no judgement, because it’s definitely out of my comfort zone too. Such was the challenge for our middle school and high school youth at a Bible camp this summer. Appropriately named “The Leap of Faith,” this high ropes challenge demands trust: trust in the harness and rope, trust in your fellow cabinmates to man the rope, and perhaps most importantly – trust in yourself.

Well, this summer, one of our youth was determined to do the Leap of Faith. With ease, she climbed to the top of the pole and sat down. But then, she froze. In an instant, her demeanor changed with her face showing nothing but sheer panic. No matter what any of us were saying on the ground, she couldn’t imagine leaving the top of the pole. For safety reasons, we couldn’t pull her off the pole. If she could move just an inch – if she could begin the process of moving forward – then we would be able to assist her and give her momentum to fall. In time, this brave, brave camper did just that. Sliding an inch forward, and then another, and then another, we were able to give a little extra pull on the rope and she safely made it to the ground.

Since coming home from camp, our youth have continued to talk about this, and I have continued to think about just how appropriate this situation is even for adults. For any one of us, we might find ourselves in situations that make us freeze, that feel impossible, that feel out of our league, or that are downright frightening. Whether it’s something new we’re doing for the first time, or whether it’s simply a new perspective that we’ve been invited to consider, jumping head-long into it might seem like the craziest thing to do. Here’s the thing: in a lot of situations, we don’t have to do it all ourselves. All that’s being asked of us is to move an inch, and maybe one more inch. It might be “our job” to move that far. Then, trusting the community of people around us, and trusting the work of the Spirit within us giving us more power than we could ever imagine, often we find that we have been moved, from one place to another, having completed something we thought we could never, ever do.

So, if you’re facing something that just seems “too big” or “too scary” or “too much to ask” right now, try sliding forward just an inch. Then, as you’re ready, slide forward yet one more inch – trusting that you’ve got people around you encouraging you to complete that which is before you, and trusting that you will be given all that you need as you move forward in faith.