Taking The Hill, pt. 2

I blogged about this back in November, but I have been encouraged by a dear friend to elaborate on the story. J

 

While I was in
San Francisco for a conference, I had the chance to travel around town via public transit.  Being from the big city and being the adventurous type, I attempted to go to one of the meetings by myself. Now, my only mistake, seemingly, was this: taking public transit in an unfamiliar city, when I was already late for the meeting I was going to.  However, I would soon come to learn that this wasn’t a mistake at all, but simply an opportunity for God to get something through my thick head.

 

As I said, I was already late for the session I was heading to and on a new public transit system, so I asked the conductor what stop I should get off at to get to the meeting venue. The trolley conductor TOLD ME THE WRONG STOP!  So, I had to walk up this MASSIVELY long and steep hill.  As I was trudging up the hill, muttering under my breath about the “stupid conductor letting me off at the wrong stinking stop and now I have to walk all the way up this dumb hill,” I looked down and saw the images that follows stenciled on the sidewalk.  God stopped me short and said – “See, if you had gotten off at the right stop, you never would have seen this.”

 

It spoke to me because it really is the existence of God that gives me any kind of hope.  There have been a lot of things that I’ve dealt with in life that would make most people want to give up.  And, honestly, there were times I wanted to give up.  (Thankfully, I’m far too much of a coward for permanent methods of giving up). However, for quite a while, a sense of apathy pervaded my day-to-day life.  It’s only recently that I’ve started shedding the apathy and trying to care about things again.

 

A very wise person (:-)) had this to say about the picture and my experience:

“You climbed the hill because you didn’t know it was going to be this hill.  You climbed it, and could then look down at where you came from.  If you had known ahead of time about the hill, and knew of another way excluding the climb would you have taken it?…”