Recently I took our grandsons out on the lake in the kayaks. Everyone had their own boat, although some of the boats were easier to paddle than the others. We paddled out to the middle of the cove, tied the boats together, and the boys tried to stand up and balance on the kayaks in the wake of passing boats. Well as you can imagine, this balancing act turned into a contest to see who could stay on the boat the longest while the other tried to knock the other off. After a short time, they both got more and more aggressive as the frustration level grew. As they were in the water, hanging onto the up-side-down kayak Titanic style, I decided it was time for them to work out their differences. I gave them each a paddle, tied the small kayak to the back of the kayak they were holding onto, and explained that they needed to flip the kayak, climb on top, and row back to our dock. They saw this as a new and different challenge, as I saw it as ‘learning opportunity’. I explained that the person in front was the leader, that the person in back had to row with the front person… with their oars on the same side at the same time, and they had to work together if they were to get back to the shore. I paddled about 15 feet away from the boys, giggled as I watched them flip the boat, climb on, then try to row to shore. They “knocked” oars over and over again as they struggled to move the boat in circles. At one point, the brother in the back held his oar in his lap, while his fussy brother in front had to do all the work. (That did not go over well at all.) I let them figure out that even though the person in the back had to follow the one in front, the person in front had to be consistent as a leader, and communicate if and when they had to row a time or two on the same side to turn. After a few minutes of fussing at each other, they figured out how to work together, and that working together, they had a lot more fun, and they moved faster through the water.
It’s funny how life is like this. Sometimes you lead, and sometimes you follow. No matter what role you are in at that moment, there each of us have a responsibility. You can’t have a leader without a follower. There are times in our lives that we need someone in the back of our kayak to push us and make us better. There are times in our lives when we need to follow and conform to the rhythm of those leading us. There are times when we need to work together as a team, to become better.
“It takes a grinding wheel to sharpen a blade,
and so one person sharpens the character of another.” Proverbs 27:17
Sometimes when we hit a bit of resistance, we fold. Sometimes when we hit resistance, we push back so hard, we break something. What God wants us to do when we hit resistance is to lean into it, learn from it, allow that resistance to make us stronger, become better, be sharper than we were before. That day in the middle of the cove, these boys learned that they struggled while paddling on their own, but working together they could go further and faster. They learned that each of them had a role, and one was not more important than the other. They learned that working together was much more fun and a lot faster than doing things by themselves.
