The Other Side of the Mountain

It's easy to get complacent.  We pull ourselves out of one hole, push off in the right direction, drive for a time, and suddenly find ourselves in another hole.  How did my good intentions and positive speeches put me into a place just as murky and hopeless as before?  And then I remember the one day I was too tired to read my Bible, and how one day stretched into a week, and before I knew it reading my Bible was the exception, not the rule.  I recall, ashamed, how I stopped looking God in the eye when my sins became too obvious even to my so deceptive heart.  And the chapter of Romans that was infiltrating every portion of my mind?  It began to be blurry and forgotten when speaking it took more concentration than I wanted to use.

Going up a mountain seems like it would be easy, once you get a good start.  That's when you realize you're sliding backwards.

I'm at war with myself, all the time, every day.  People say it should get easier, over time, to be righteous, but I do not see that yet.  If that is true, then I must certainly be the worst of sinners, without hope of holiness and virtue in this life, and I wish people would stop thinking to comfort me with words that actually chill me.  I know what it is like to feel the sin crouching at the door of my heart, and I can feel helpless, sympathetic to sin that perhaps Cain also felt unable to avoid.  "Who will free me from this body of death?" I cry, hopeless in my state of degradation, every minute fighting a more often lost battle for control over my own mind.  Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ His Son, is what I should say next, but the words choke me, for I do not seem free at all.  Not yet.  My sinning heart aches for righteousness that would be pleasing to God, forcing me to remember Whose righteousness covers my own inadequacy, forcing me to remember Whose humility covers my own pride.  "Hope that is seen is not hope," I remind myself, but meanwhile I clench my teeth in frustration at my own weakness and despair at ever living what I want to live.

I prayed for humility, but I never thought it would come even in my fiercer struggles with sin than ever before.  Silly as it sounds, I envy the people who seem to get by in life with easy, though consistent, trotting toward the prize.  My efforts are ever in need of being redoubled, not relaxed.  As if any moment may see me falling prey once again to that roaring lion, and if I stop my watch for the briefest of seconds my heart will betray me.

I must always be fighting for every step.  So be it.  If my whole life is to be a series of hard battles and fearsome ends, only pushing forward through shamed tears and aching pride?  So be it.  I will keep fighting.  If every step up this mountain is as hard as the last, though it may kill me, I will move on.  Because some day, some glorious day, I will get to the other side of the mountain, and none of the glory I see will be for me.  I will reach the top truly humbled, Lord willing, and it will be all for Him.  I won't have to fight ever again.

I will reach, once for all, level ground, that only ever goes higher.