The Christian Century

In my childhood one of the lessons I had to learn the hard way—and repeatedly—is that coming down is almost always more difficult than going up. Whether I was scaling a tall tree, climbing rocks or racing to the top of a ladder, the descent seemed both harder and more nerve-wracking than the ascent. Perhaps that's why I'm drawn to the last verses in both the first and third readings for this day: each talks about life on the downslope.