After nearly two weeks spent in India, I have a new personal motto: Climb the hill again.
When people ask me where I am, and I answer India, they usually google it and comment on how beautiful it is. And it is truly beautiful in the foothills of the Himalayas! However, they usually don’t realize how the whole town seems to be built on the side of a hill. Everything here is either up or down. Very little is lateral or sideways.
My room (where I’m currently living out of suitcases), for example, is 6,800 feet above sea level. My language school, where I take classes every day, is more than 7,300 feet above sea level! That means every day I climb more than 500 feet (or 150 meters).
I take a bath, but when I have to climb the hill again, I get all hot and sweaty. I feel fine and well rested, but when I have to climb the hill again, my heart starts to pound, and my breathing gets heavy once again.
Do I really want to climb that hill again? Not really. But I must.
Climb the hill again.
But you would think that, once I’m at the top, at the language school, I’d have a reprieve. However, you would be wrong.
That’s an aspirated consonant not an unaspirated one. Climb the hill again. That’s a cerebral (with the tongue on the roof of your mouth), not a dental (with the tongue behind your teeth). Climb the hill again. That’s a feminine noun, not a masculine noun. Climb the hill again. That’s a masculine noun ending in “a” followed by the postposition, changing “ah” to “ay”! Climb the hill again!
Don’t get me wrong. After less than two weeks, I’m pleased that I can understand and say as much as I can! (“Whose book is on that table?” etc.) I can even say a few silly sentences about a monkey stealing my food, which is a true story! But fluency is an elusive, seemingly far away thing. It means climbing the hill over and over and over again!
But is this all that my motto really means? Physically climbing up a hillside or mentally exercising the linguistic portion of my brain? Is there not a deeper spiritual meaning to this motto as well?!
Yes. At Christmas, we climbed the hill again on which Bethlehem stands – to see our incarnate Lord and Savior, the Christ-child. On this last Sunday, many of us climbed the hill of Transfiguration again – to see Jesus in all his glory – assuring us that his passion is purposeful, not that everything was merely spiraling out of control. And, most significantly, every Lenten season we climb the hill of Calvary again to see the awful price paid for all of our sins.
Climb the hill again.
This motto really applies to every Christian as we daily bring our sins to the foot of the cross. Climb the hill again! Then, the next day, we climb the hill again, and again, and again, and again! Each time, we are assured of his grace to us! Each time, we are declared to be forgiven children of the Most High!
So, what can I do? Nothing really. Nothing but climb the hill again. Yes, climb the steps to the language school. And climb the mental gymnastics of my mind trying to get my brain to think in another language. And most importantly climb the hill to Calvary again with my latest load of sins, dumping them there at the feet of my Savior.
Each and every day. . . .
“Climb the hill again.”
Written by Missionary John Hildebrant, missionary on the Asia-Oceania Team
Learn about the ministry work of WELS Missions.
Support the ministry work of WELS Missions.
