The British writer C. C. Montague once told a remarkable short story about a man in his early fifties who awoke one morning with a curious numb feeling in his right side, which affected him from head to foot. The man had lived an active life, achieved a reasonable degree of success, but was now alone in the world, his wife being dead and his children grown and married. He saw the numbness as the beginning of old age. As he pondered his situation, he came at length to a decision. This moment was an opportunity for him, while his strength and vigor remained, to carry out an experiment in which he had long been interested. He was a lover of the mountains and a first-rate climber. He would go to the Alps, and throw away all caution in climbing and climb higher than he had ever climbed before. He had nothing to lose by such an experiment. No precipice could frighten him anymore, after all, his life was nearly over. He would climb as he had never climbed before. And, when he reached the limits of strength and endurance, that would be that.

So Christopher Bell went to Switzerland to a special place that he had in mind, and one morning some weeks later started out alone to climb a 12,000 foot ridge over the steepest route. He noticed as he started his walk that the numbness was with him in his right leg and arm, but that he did not seem to notice it so much as he went on.

By mid-afternoon he was part-way up the ridge, slowly and painfully cutting steps in the ice wall with his axe. He was beginning to tire, and the way ahead was ever steeper and more dangerous. But he felt no fear. Never had the world seemed so beautiful. Never had the zest of climbing been so great. He came at last to a precipitous cliff, sheathed in ice, which was even steeper than the vertical. It had several overhangs which seemed almost impossible to negotiate. But without hesitation he began the ascent, cutting holds for hands and feet with his axe, and holding on against gravity with his free arm. The progress was slow, but at last he reached the most hazardous spot of all: a place where the overhang was directly above him. Progress could be made only inch by painful inch, and at tremendous expenditure of strength and endurance. He began to feel the drag of a huge fatigue, the ache in all his joints, which warned that his strength was failing. And yet, knowing that one relaxed muscle could let him drop hundreds of feet to his death, he went on and on until he reached the moment when he could no longer raise his arm to chop the steps in the ice which were his only safety. He looked up at the overhang still above him, and knew that he could not make those last few feet. And he knew also that he had reached at length the moment he had sought.

Suddenly, however, he became aware of something above him, on the upper side of the overhang. He could not see, but he could hear voices, and presently an ice axe came sliding over the edge of the overhang and fell into the abyss below. He knew that somebody was above him, and that whoever was there was in trouble. Then he heard a cry of distress. New strength began to flow into his arms and legs. He knew no numbness, no cramps, no fatigue. He knew only that he must get up there to give what help he could.

Swiftly and yet carefully he began to climb again, cutting the steps with his axe, pulling himself miraculously upward. And then suddenly he had made it, and saw above him two people: a woman dangling helplessly on a rope, a man above her unable to move from a precarious perch since his whole strength was necessary to hold the woman. Bell came to the rescue and was able to bring these two people to safety. Together the three surmounted the ridge, found a hut, and spent the night in warmth and conversation. Bell had, of course, rescued the man and the woman. But they had also rescued him. For, if he had not heard their distress, he would have yielded to exhaustion and lost his own grasp.

What a marvelous parable of our place in this world. God has placed us here to serve one another and to serve Him. It is in giving away our lives that we receive new life. It is in serving that we find greatness. It is in losing our lives that we find them. Whose life is better because you have been here? It is only in adding to the lives of others that we find value in our lives.

C. E. Montague, Action and Other Stories (Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1929). Cited in Harry C. Meserve, No Peace of Mind (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1955), pp. 139-141.