I have lived in two houses so far in my life. Both of them were on steep inclinations. The hill outside my current house slants away from us, before curving and climbing up another hill to get to the entrance of the neighborhood. If you’re coming toward the house, you’re climbing. If you’re leaving, then you’re descending.
It was the same way with the hill that we lived on in an older, more run-down neighborhood. Starting from our house, you could ride a bike down the long street that went straight down the hill to the end of the block. You could also go too fast and panic, jerking the handlebars to send you skidding scraping into the asphalt, skinning flesh off hands and knees. I remember the tingling sting in my hands after hitting the pavement hard, and a sharp pang in my wrist continuing afterward for a few days. One time my brother Zack seriously bit the dust, coming up with bright red bleeding cuts on one knee, elbow, and hands, and needed us to gently usher him back up the hill to our house.
Everyone’s on inclinations, at some point on our way up or down. Some are on their bikes speeding down that old hill, falling off and getting back on and continuing, down past the mailbox sitting on the street corner, encircled by thin dry weeds, down further than we were allowed to go, down and down, past the house with the blue roof, and the guy who was always working on cars in his driveway, to where the road climbed up and curved away into unknown territory. Far away from home.
Others, like me, are climbing upward, legs burning, lungs gasping, marveling at how out of shape we are, making slow, painful progress. Our home is at the top. Sometimes, as we climb up to it, we slip and fall and scrape our knees. Sometimes nothing. We spend most of the climb on hands and knees, crying, wondering why we keep falling down. Why can’t we keep our balance for once? Why does our skin keep breaking open, gushing all this messy redness out everywhere? Can’t it just stop? How long does this have to be? Will we ever reach the top?
But when you slip and skin your knees on the way up, it’s different from falling off your bike while rocketing downhill as fast as your hedonism will carry you. Injuries or no, they’re headed away from home. But we, well, we’re on our way home, even if we have to go through so many scrapes and bruises, and the protests of our weary bodies, lungs, and hearts. We’ll get there. We’ll arrive at where the Father waits, watching down the road, for the crying little boys to trudge on up to where he stands, eager to run out to them and scoop them up, like my neighbor did when his son crashed his bike, and carry them, still crying, into the house. And then he’ll sit you down, on the couch, maybe, and gently kiss your wounds, and then look you in the eyes, and wipe away your tears. And then perhaps you will think to yourself that it was indeed worth the climb, and all the pain and struggle it took, when you see this full display of the abundance of your Father’s grace.