Forward, Upward!

When I was thirteen, my family went to Washington, D.C. for the first time.  It was awesome!  The streets were wide, and the feeling was spacious.  We visited all of the typical sites: The White House, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Washington Monument.  But at the Washington monument, the line to the elevator up was huge!  As my dad considered the long wait, a park ranger offered a suggestion.  He said that we could walk up and ride down.  There was no line to walk up, of course, and once you were up, there was no line to ride down.  Back then, visitors were allowed to take the stairs.  The ranger said that it was easier on the legs to walk up than to walk down.  Interesting.  So, our family walked up 898 steps!  We looked through the observation windows, and then rode the elevator down.  It seems that the human body is designed to walk forward easier that to walk backwards.  You have much stronger muscles to run forward but small, weaker muscles to run backwards, and only with difficulty.  It is easier to climb up steps than to walk down steps.  Hey, there’s a life lesson here!  God has designed us to face our problems rather than to back away from them.  Proverbs 10:4, “He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand: but the hand of the diligent maketh rich.”  If we procrastinate, problems never resolve themselves.  If we avoid problems, they don’t get better on their own.  Problems don’t go away, they’re still there.  But if we face our problems head on, we can get on with our life … a life free of the problems that we have dealt with.