Rolling over in the middle of a darkness lit only by moonlight while quickly scanning the sand for rattlesnakes and scorpions gave me a new perspective on the old song, “Angels watching over me, my Lord.” As I rode through rapids, one of which is the largest navigable in North America, I realized how much faith I had in the boatman’s skills and the raft’s construction. Washing in 50 degree water helped me appreciate appliances and plumbing anew.
  These lessons in trust, faith, and gratitude came from a week-long raft trip down the Grand Canyon. It was an incredible experience and one of the hardest things I have ever done. For years, I had wanted to see the Grand Canyon from more than just the rim Also, I stay better connected to God when I regularly encounter things that are bigger than I am, things that make my “faith rubber hit the road,” so to speak. Sitting safely in church on Sunday morning, I am not often forced to come face-to-face in any kind of experiential way with my mortality and whether or not I believe that God can and will truly care for me in all circumstances.
  At one point on the trip, the boatman announced the next rapid was safe enough to swim through and without much forethought, I found myself leaping over the side. While I was in a life jacket, I had a moment of sheer panic when I hit that water. There are nice metaphors about Jesus being our Pilot through treacherous seas but I got a glimpse of what the waves that old hymn talks about might really be like as my lungs constricted in the frigid water which came over me faster than I could manage breaths for.
  As I finally managed to swim to the raft, the boatman had to reach down and haul me in by my lifejacket as I had no energy to save myself at that point. That is an image I have heard about for over a half a century of being a disciple of Jesus and yet, that swim in the Colorado River gave me a new sense of what a living faith in Christ can look like.
  Another hymn I will sing with new eyes is “O God, Our Help in Ages Past”, especially verse 5: Time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears all our years away; they fly forgotten, as a dream dies at the op’ning day. My trip of a lifetime became a place for God to encounter me in ways that will transform the words I sing with others in safe places on Sunday morning.