Piggyback Rides

Who doesn’t love a piggyback ride, with little kids laughing and grandparents puffing? There is excitement and exaltation, followed by pulse-checking and aspirin. The essence of the piggyback ride is to move a child from Point A to Point B, for either family fun or necessity.

At times it is hard to tell the difference. If you are at the county fair and see a piggyback ride in action, odds are the little kids have slowed down, or they are becoming harder to catch as the folks have slowed down. The child, who doesn’t know the difference, just knows they are getting a piggyback ride, and that works for them.

My youngest son and I were headed down into The Pines one afternoon. We had two ladder stands set up about 20 yards apart. I was training him to sit on his own, but I would still be close enough to respond to any event that might come along. It had rained most of the week, and to our surprise, it had flooded the area where we were planning to hunt. It wasn’t a raging flood, but it was deep enough to be over his boots. His excitement at getting to sit by himself was being dampened by the predicament. There was only one thing to do: I stooped down without saying a word, and he handed me his gun, and climbed aboard my back. When we got to the stand, it was an easy matter to turn sideways to the ladder, and let him step onto it and start to climb.

I will always remember the ride I gave to my youngest son down in The Pines, simply due to its uniqueness. It did not get the laughs and smiles that I usually received when I gave other rides to him, but rather it was greeted as a calculated matter-of-fact. He needed to get to the stand, and he wanted to stay dry. Dad simply became a means, a vehicle if you would, to accomplish a task. Of course, after we got home, and as I was trying to straighten-up, it became an opportunity for him to ask for some new boots.

I would like to think that Jesus gave a few rides to his siblings, or to some neighbor kids; and that is the source for our discussion on the science of piggyback rides (or maybe a better way to say it would be the A-B-C’s of piggyback riding).

Let’s assume you need to get from Point A to Point B, but you have found you are not capable of making the journey. Your legs are too short, or you are too weak, or maybe you aren’t able to stand in the mud/snow/water that covers your path. Perhaps the current of the stream or river is too fast. The bottom line here (and let’s remove the camouflage) is: you can’t get to heaven on your own. No amount of good work, no amount of effort, no amount of money donated, will get you there. You stand on the shore of a mighty river looking at heaven, but one step, and you will be swept away and destroyed. You need a piggyback ride from someone. The “A” is the essential for this ride; it stands for “ABIDE.”

“I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do noth- ing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned. — John 15:5,6