You may remember the story of Aaron Ralston who, a few years ago, while climbing in Utah, pushed his arm into a crack in the rock face and then got trapped by a large boulder. Everthing he tried failed to move the boulder, including chipping away at it with his pocket-knife. Finally, after three days, he used his blunt pocket-knife to amputate his arm. Somehow he remained conscious and having applied a makeshift tourniquet he rappelled sixty feet to the canyon floor. ‘I’m not sure how I handled it,’ he said later. ‘I felt pain, and I coped with it. Then I moved on.’
There’s a message there for all of us who are trapped between a rock and a hard place. We may feel pain, but we have to move on. The Bible reminds us that it’s life’s tests that produce perseverance, and perseverance produces great souls.