We’re Going on a Bear Hunt

C. S. Lewis said: ‘Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality.’

I want to say a few words about courage. And to do so I will be drawing upon the deep theological work that many will be familiar with: ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’ by Michael Rosen.

In it the family face a number of obstacles; grass, a river, mud, a forest and a snowstorm, on their hunt for the bear, and each time there is a refrain: ‘We can’t go over it, we can’t go under it, oh no! We’ve got to go through it!’

In life there are often challenges and obstacles that give us the choice: do we avoid it or go through it? It is the tough times that grow us and make us better people. It is in making mistakes that we learn. It is in not giving up that we break through and succeed.

So courage – an often misunderstood or ignored virtue – is vital if we are to become the people we were created to be. When we reflect on all the people in history who achieved great things – be it the Wright brothers and their quest for flight, Wilberforce and the abolition of slavery, Churchill and his leadership during times of great peril – all the stories have at their heart the virtue of courage. Thomas Edison, the inventor of the light bulb, famously said: ‘I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.’ It takes courage to stick at it, especially when you’re losing money in the process.

The thing with courage is that we elevate it into something unattainable for most of us: the Nike Just Do It adventure quality; the Drawing Your Sword In Battle To Defend Sparta Against The Persian Army quality. The George Cross Medal Of Valour quality. But what about the other types of courage? 

Here are my top five lesser courages that we all need a bit more of. Our Every Day Bear Hunt Qualities:

1. Courage to get out of bed. This is the courage all of us display in the little things of life – pushing through, taking a stand, sometimes just getting out of the bed in the morning to face the day. All of us face a daily choice of whether to go under it, round it, over it or actually through it. It being the day in front of us.
2. Courage to fail. As Theodore Roosevelt said – “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
3. Courage to believe. Dreams, hopes, belief – life will (if we let it) knock all of these wonderful things out of us, starting with Father Christmas and the tooth fairy, possibly ending with our belief of a creator God who loves us and can intervene in our circumstances. To hold onto belief takes courage.
4. Courage to be vulnerable. In a world that rewards strength, might and power, sometimes we are called to take the way of the weak. Blessed are the meek – and in the words of Simon and Garfunkel. Blessed are the sat upon, spat upon, ratted on. But vulnerability takes courage.
5. Courage to push on through. When issues come up, when your stuff rears its ugly head, our instinct is to run and hide. To back off. When you hit the wavy grass, the river, the mud or the forest, may you find the courage to not go over it, not go under it, but go through it.

I pray that in the challenges and battles that you face – some small and some huge – may you be able to find the courage to face them and go through them, taking strength in the knowledge that in facing it and not avoiding it you will grow as a person, and that with God you need never be alone:

‘In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord..’ Romans 8:37-39