To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here
Tim Hansel loved to push his body to the limits.
He went to Stanford University on a football scholarship in the 1960’s.
After earning two degrees, he turned down an opportunity to join the coaching staff. His heart was set on more extreme challenges.
Hansel felt most alive in the wilderness – especially California’s rugged Sierra Nevada mountains, forests, and glaciers.
As a Social Studies teacher at a public high school, he quickly discerned that his students did not feel particularly alive. They seemed terminally afflicted by boredom and apathy. If only he could push them beyond their predictable boundaries.
What if he took them into the wilderness?
It was worth a shot.
Hansel scheduled a couple of weekend camping trips for his students. The results were so encouraging that he began to offer longer and longer “outdoor experiential education” adventures.
Early in the 1970’s, Hansel founded Summit Expedition, one of the first wilderness-based ministries in the United States. The wilderness, he said, is “the finest place to train servant leaders.” Thriving in such an environment requires courage, stamina, creativity, and a high commitment to collaborating with others.
And it’s definitely not boring.
Hansel married a special woman named Anastasia. They were blessed with two sons. Life itself felt like a great adventure.
Until suddenly it wasn’t.
In 1974, while trying to cross a snowbridge on a glacier, his crampons became fouled with snow. Hansel slipped. He plunged headfirst into a crevasse, landing with a crunch on his upper back and neck.
Hansel somehow got to his feet, climbed back up the crevasse, and walked 20 miles to his car. But his injuries were severe. He had cracked vertebrae, crushed spinal discs, and bone fragments lodged in his neck.
Hansel lived another 35 years. But he would never be the same again. His life became a daily experience of unrelenting pain. The agile outdoorsman morphed into someone who could barely leave his house. It was the cruelest of blows for a man who loved physical challenges.
Plan A was gone. “Teach me to live in new ways, O Lord,” he prayed.
As it turned out, Plan B was pretty spectacular.
Hansel became a captivating speaker and writer. He churned out 12 books. He is most remembered for You Gotta Keep Dancing, in which he found an entirely new audience – people suffering from chronic pain, sadness, and physical limitations.
“Pain is inevitable,” Tim wrote, “but misery is optional.” We can always choose the way we respond to what life throws at us. We can always choose joy.
Hansel’s suffering finally came to an end in 2009. Anastasia asked that his cremated ashes be returned to her in the least expensive vessel. A few days later she received a cardboard box that was labeled “Temporary Container.”
The mortuary wasn’t trying to make a theological statement, but that’s surely how Tim Hansel would have taken it.
We all live in temporary containers.
On any given day, we might face changing waistlines and retreating hairlines. Life includes headaches, joint pain, blemishes, reflux, diabetes, and cancer. And every 24 hours we are one day closer to the day that we have to leave these temporary containers behind.
Followers of Jesus have always believed that life isn’t over when it’s over.
It seems fitting that Anastasia is the Greek word for “resurrection.”
In the new heavens and new earth that God promises, there’s every reason to believe there will be new mountains to climb.
And we will definitely be on our feet dancing.