Let us pray: Gracious and eternal Father, as we begin this Lenten journey, we seek to focus our hearts and minds upon understanding the ways in which you work to heal us of our afflictions. Lord grant us wisdom in these moments. May the words of our mouths, the meditations of our hearts be always acceptable in thy sight, O Lord our strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

Sir Edmund Hillary is the explorer and humanitarian from New Zealand who was the first man to stand atop Mount Everest, the highest mountain on the face of the earth. In his autobiography, titled Nothing Venture, Nothing Win, Hillary speaks of scaling this mountain as "the ultimate in achievement; the supreme challenge for flesh and blood and spirit."1

I found it rather curious in this biography that Hillary did not really writ…