Rafting Trip

See me in the bottom right......^^

I left Sunday with my youth group to go on a whitewater rafting trip up in West Virginia. And here's what happened. We get there, and by there I mean in the middle of nowhere somewhere in the mountains of West Virginia, and before we even go to the place we're staying, we pull over on this trail that leads us into the woods. Now mind you, we've been riding on a hot, no air conditioner bus pretty much all day. They proceed to tell us that before we go to the campus or unload our stuff or anything like that, we're going hiking! Most of the youth group wasn't very happy. I, on the other hand really enjoy stuff like hiking through the mountains so I tried to get everyone else to stop complaining. Then we get to what they called our "path." This path was the worst path I've ever seen. It was about a foot wide with all kinds of plants and trees growing over it. And there was another really significant problem. The entire way was infested pretty heavily with yellowjackets. I was one of the lucky few who did not get stung, thankfully. This path was also extremely rocky and at some points very VERY steep. So we're walking along just listening to the sounds of nature over everyone's complaining when all of a sudden we step out on this huge rock that juts out of the side of the mountain. It was amazing! We were very near the top of the mountain overlooking this place called the gorge which is an amazing river that flows through these mountains. The view was nothing short of breathtaking. The picture above doesn't do it very much justice. After a few minutes of ooh's and aaahs, our youth pastor tells us to take a seat. His friend, another youth pastor from WV, was with us and he took out an acoustic guitar and began to lead us in a few praise and worship songs. It's really hard to put this experience into words for me. Just sitting there, worshipping God looking out over this amazing view of His creation. Wow. You look all around and you see these huge mountains just surrounding you and you can hear the sound of the river flowing down below. As you look at the river you can even see the rapids a little ways upstream. For me, it was just an amazing experience where I could really feel how close God is. You could just feel His presence.

The path reminded me of life. Life is hard. We go through many thick areas, over a lot of steep paths, and we get stung a lot of times but we're constantly having to push our way through. But in the end, it's all worth it to get to our final destination and be with God.

Another symbolic meaning I found in this trip was looking down at the river. You could see some pretty intense rapids that the rafts would go through but if you could look ahead, just a little further downriver, you'd see peaceful waters. So no matter what you're going through, there's always a newfound peace at the end. These were just some comforting thoughts that crossed my mind as I was listening to the music and taking in my surroundings.

It was also pretty cool the next day when we were actually rafting on that river to be able to look up at the rock that we were on the night before. It was a great trip. :]