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Good morning.  One day in the late summer of 1953, two famous men visited the village of Balquhidder in Scotland.  One was tall and fair-haired and the other shorter and dark-skinned.   Their names were Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay.  A few months after they made history by summitting Mount Everest on the 29th of May, they’d come to this tiny village in Stirlingshire to visit a local climber who’d sponsored their expedition.  

Half a century later, on a bright morning in March, Vicky Jack was leaving her cottage in Balquhidder. She’d been dreaming of this day for 10 years:  she was off to climb Mount Everest.  She’d already climbed all the Munros in Scotland, and the highest mountains on six continents.  Only Everest remained.  

Vicky wanted to climb the mountain on the anniversary of that first ascent, and in the year she became 50.  But it was not to be.  A few hundred feet from the summit, the weather deteriorated, the wind screamed, and she and her Sherpa were nearly blown off the mountain.  After the years of preparation, the thousands of pounds, the single-minded focus on one goal – she turned back. 

I’ve been thinking about my friend, in the aftermath of the General Election. Success for some, failures for others.  I don’t think we ever see things so clearly as we do when we fail; when we miss what we set our heart on.  Perspective comes with loss, not success; with upheaval and change, not contentedness. It takes courage to start again.  A year later, Vicky returned to Everest – and reached the summit.  

Loving God – when we struggle, when we doubt what we used to be sure of: when we have to start again, grant us understanding and insight.  Amen.