When I send any seasonal wishes, especially to people who I know well, it’s never just a Happy Birthday or Happy Christmas or Happy New Year etc. It is always followed by what I mean by those words in this particular moment in time. On New Year’s Day, one of my best friends, among other things, sent me this line: ‘I wish you to climb Everest this year, whatever it might mean’. She knows me very well and she knows about my love for the mountains, so this line didn’t surprise me. I started typing a reply half joking that it might not be Mount Everest, but maybe Mount Blanc or at least Monte Perdido would do. My instinctive reaction was that Everest would be too much. Think of something more realistic. At this point, I stopped typing and never sent that message.

I thought to myself, why not Everest… I recalled a prayer that wrote on the New Years Eve. Part of that prayer was about dreaming big, dreaming God’s dreams. Realistic is too small for God and Everest seems so impossible and so out of reach, but… Impossible is God’s starting point.
I’ve never made any New Year’s resolutions and I’m not a goal-setting person either. There is a lot that one might read out of this, I guess, but I don’t think that it really matters. What I started doing recently is allowing myself to dream. I don’t mean walking around with your head in the clouds. I mean trying to see and hear what ideas God plants in my heart and actually follow them. For a long time, for years, in fact, I disregarded that because I thought that whatever came to my mind was my own idea or imagination or plain fantasy. It was almost like if I wanted or loved doing something, it couldn’t possibly come from Him. Where on earth did I get this from! Never mind, important is that if you connect with Him, He does speak through your dreams and vision.

Among other things, He leads and guides us using things that we love doing and are passionate about, things that are important to us. Discovering and accepting this finally brought relief and peace as well as excitement and some sense of adventure. Responding to those ideas takes courage which I know I need more of, but I noticed something beautiful and incredibly encouraging. When something comes to my mind, crazy it might seem at the time (Everest🤔), I look at it and I say to God: ‘OK if that’s what you want me to do or be, I’ll go for it. I have no idea how and where to start, but if that’s what you want, Lord, I’ll do it’. Then things begin to happen. While you spend time with Him and that dream that He planted in your heart, you start seeing what and how and when and who… Take my Everest – you start seeing the ways to prepare your body, to get yourself to the Himalayas, how to get to the base camp, acclimatise and in many cases you start seeing the ways to finance all those things. Some of God’s dreams for us cost nothing, many need money. If you make that first step just by saying: ‘I’ll go for it’, He’ll give you whatever you need to do it.

On the mountain the Lord will provide…

It’s not magic and wishful thinking. There is still climbing to do, but we don’t do it alone… God gives us beautiful dreams and visions – for us personally, for our communities, for the world – and He reveals Himself when they become reality. He created us to thrive, not to live in a constant survival mode. There are times when life is about true survival, but then He gives us strength and sends the mountain rescue, whatever and whoever it might mean. He wants us all to live life in its fullness and wants to do amazing things for us, with us and through us. He wants you to climb Everest with Him.

What is your Everest?

Draw it… Write about it… Map it… Talk about it… Do whatever works for you, but start here and climb it this year.