Ok, So It's An Uphill Climb...

Ok.

So you start your diet and the very same day, your spouse surprises you with a scrumptious, beyond-fattening, yummy dessert and you give-up even trying because you know this will just happen over and over.

--and any day you seriously need and want to receive your new (fill in the blank) from Amazon or Ebay, there will be only echoes in your mailbox--

-- and when you recommend a new tv show to a good church friend, it will be the first (and only) sleazy episode of the season--

--and when you had your day planned full of fun things, your child will get sick or else, you will--

--and just when you pay-off your credit card, your appliances start rattling, groaning and breaking down---


And then the Bible has the audacity to tell you to "Count it all joy! Rejoice always! Do not complain or murmur!" (yada yada yada.)

Well, it may help to remember this--

Life is like that.

Stuff happens--and not just to you, either, but to all of us.

Often Life is an uphill climb, but we have One who helps us hike it and there's something right, raw and clean in feeling the stretch, the pull in your legs as you push past what comes naturally. There is no stretch, no pull, no exhilaration in complaining.

Anyone can complain and whine and murmur. Anyone can run, shrieking, back downhill. That's easy.

But oh, the view as you climb higher!

And the peaceful places, the ones discovered only by climbers who continued on--they are like nothing else in the lowlands.

******