LifeLink Devotions for Wednesday, March 19, 2025

George Mallory was an English mountaineer who took part in the first three British expeditions to Mount Everest in the early 1920s. Mallory and his climbing partner both disappeared somewhere high on the North-East ridge during their attempt to make the first ascent of the world’s highest mountain.

Before his disappearance, when Mallory was asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest, he famously answered, “Because it is there.” But on another occasion George expanded his answer:

“If you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won’t see why we go. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life.”

A personal letter to George’s wife, Ruth, reveals even more about what drove him to climb the mountain. “Dearest,” he wrote, “… you must know that the spur to do my best is you and you again …. I want more than anything to prove worthy of you.”

However, although George Mallory became famous for his achievements, his son John had a different perspective. Proud of his father but sad too, John would later write, “I would so much rather have known my father than to have grown up in the shadow of a legend, a hero, as some people perceive him to be.”

Here was a man who had misplaced priorities, yet we call him a hero. Joy is not the highest objective of life. The priority of life is not to prove ourselves worthy to anyone. That priority is symptomatic of a deep need for identity and proof of personal value which will never be found in the pursuit of accomplishments but only in the pursuit of Jesus Christ. The result of such misaligned priorities is the loss of personal relationships as witnessed by Mallory’s son John. Whenever the priorities of life are determined by personal need or selfish ambition we will hurt the very ones we may be trying to impress.

Ephesians 6:4  “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”

If we are going to align our priorities with God’s Word I believe it starts with accepting God’s declaration that He has qualified us in Christ and that we have nothing more to earn or prove. (Colossians 1:12) Having done that, we will invest in relationships that are primarily giving in nature, not receiving. Out of the abundance of peace and joy that are now ours because our identity in Christ is sufficient, our priority can be to give of ourselves to benefit others. We should do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than us. We will look not only to our own interests, but also to the interests of others. (Philippians 2:3-4)

Make the commitment today that your priority will be others, not self.

Pastor John