Strength to Strength

Climbers will tell you the summit is the shortest part of the trip. You stand there a few minutes, take a picture and start down. The climb is where the work happens. Every hour of friction on the way up changes the person who makes it to the top.

Work goals are the same. The promotion, the launch, the finished project: they matter, but they are not the main thing God is building. He is building you. Paul says what the goal really is: those he foreknew he “also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son.”

The psalmist describes people on pilgrimage this way: “Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee; in whose heart are the ways of them.” And as they keep walking, “They go from strength to strength, every one of them in Zion appeareth before God.” The road itself makes them stronger.

So set goals and chase them well. But don’t despise the hard middle of the climb. That is where God is doing the deeper work, and that part doesn’t disappear when you reach the top.