Ski Day

Wednesday was a ski day. Nothing fancy, just a day at a local Ontario resort, but with good company.  Thank you Sandra, for asking if we could go skiing one day during Reading Week.  Pffff!  Yeah!

It's been a long time since I've had a ski day, two maybe even three years!  Way too long. The ski legs were a little rusty, taking a few runs to get confident again. 

Parabolic, or shaped, skis have been around a couple of decades now. They are shorter and have a bigger sweet spot than conventional skis, making them more forgiving, easier to ski, higher performing and a lot more fun to ski on. I like to think of them as power steering skis. After the prolonged hiatus, I certainly appreciated them afresh this week!

Being frugal, ok cheap, I waited a long time to get with the parabolic trend. I finally succumbed a couple of BC trips back, buying a pair of all mountain Atomic R11's. It turns out these are based on a World Cup GS racing ski, which means its "ancestral voices whisper of high speeds and long, arcing turns carved across smooth sheets of hard snow". That is definitely their sweet spot. They are not mogul skis, at least not under my boots. The trick to these skis is getting on the edge and carving, so that the skis do the work of turning. When you do, you can fly down the slopes effortlessly. Quite the rush!

Buzz aside, skiing has often been a spiritual experience for me, especially in the mountains.  While re-discovering that parabolic sweet spot, it occurred to me that God's principles are to life what those skis are to skiing:

• If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commands, I will send you rain in its season, and the ground will yield its crops and the trees of the field their fruit. Your threshing will continue until grape harvest and the grape harvest will continue until planting, and you will eat all the food you want and live in safety in your land. You will still be eating last year's harvest when you will have to move it out to make room for the new. Leviticus 26:3-5, 10 
• Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.  Matthew 6:33 
• But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.  Acts 1:8 

Amazing skis, but not when skiing cautiously, only when you get moving down the hill.

Even more amazing promises, but only when we step out into the life for which God has created us, and learn to live by them!