Surprised? I’ll admit it. I was. Somewhere along the way I got the idea that the older I became, the simpler life would be.

I doubt that anyone ever told me so (they probably said just the opposite), but I always thought the easy life was just around the next hard decision. Now that I’m over half way home (surely!) I’ve accepted it. Life is uphill. It’s meant to be.

When I was in college I got up every morning at 5 a.m. to go over to the cafeteria to cook breakfast for those who got to sleep until 7.

I dreamed of the day when I could sleep that extra couple of hours.

Then I moved to Guatemala where the diesel-powered corn grinders and the roosters both crank up about 4 a.m. So much for sleeping late.

Life is uphill. You’ll have your own examples. Life does not become easier.

Complexity adds a degree of difficulty which keeps the path tilted uphill. I know now that it’s meant to be that way.

Rather than seeking the level path which takes us comfortably nowhere, let us learn how to run uphill. If that is truly the way life is, then we have been uniquely prepared to do it.

Let us live up to our creation calling. We are, after all, running for home.

Rom. 8:38-39: “For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

–Roger L. McCown