Carry On

"Siddhartha Guatama was a historical religious figure believed to have been born around 563 BC. He was a sage who became Buddha. One of his stories tells of a journey he had hiking with a monk in the bitter cold of the Himalayas.

On their way up the mountain, Siddhartha and his companion find a man who is seriously injured and cannot walk. Siddhartha tells the monk they must help the man, but the monk tells Siddhartha that because of the cold and their lack of supplies they will die if they try to carry the man. They must first save themselves. Unconvinced, Siddhartha stops to help the man while the monk goes on ahead. Siddhartha continues on his journey, physically exhausted from the chore of carrying the injured man on his back, but continues out of sheer will power. As Siddhartha approaches camp, he finds the monk frozen to death in the snow. Siddhartha and the man he saved, however, both make it to camp alive. A universal truth overwhelms him when he realized his life was only spared because of the extra energy exerted while carrying the man on his back. If he had not had the extra weight, Siddhartha would have perished along with the monk. He concludes that blessed are those persons with challenges, for it is only by working through those challenges that they will arrive at their ultimate desired destination." -Be Still by Victoria Anderson, PHD & Lois D. Brown, MA

Sometimes we may feel tempted to give up on someone because of their personal injuries or struggles, like the monk from this story. But if we can remember Mary Stevenson's Footprints In The Sand poem, "The Lord replied, “The years when you have seen only one set of footprints, my child, is when I carried you." Who better to model our lives after than the Savior. We can all aspire to carry those around us, and by doing so, we also preserve our own eternal lives.