A middle aged woman and I were engaged in a fairly normal conversation the other day, when she asked what I wanted to study in college. I informed her how music and theology have been my desire at the moment, but how only a short year ago, I planned on going into the Army, so change wasn’t out of the question. She seemed exuberated…She went on a tyrant (a very good tyrant..) about many people in this world propping their ladder up against the wrong building. And only once reaching the top, do they realize the mistake they’ve been making: they have been climbing up the wrong ladder. She told me one of the few things she doesn’t like about her job, is how every day she is forced to watch kids prop their ladder, in wet cement, against the wrong building. The shock factor for me was, this all came from a woman, who I’m not sure if attends church on a regular basis. This was one of the coolest analogies I’ve heard.
Is the only way to correct the mistake to slowly climb back down? What if I don’t realize the ladder I’m on until I’ve already reached the top? For most, the only way possible to start up the right ladder, is to completely back track, repent, and climb down. There have been a few though, who decided for themselves that change was imminent, and simply jumped from the top of their ladder, to the one they desired to be on. The apostle Paul is a great example of someone who decided “take the jump.” It paid off for him. In order to make that “jump of faith” it seems you must have the trust in God, that if you take the leap, and don’t quite make it, He will gently set you down, so as to be able to start the climb back up.