The Hill Called Difficult

Yesterday was Convocation at Southern Seminary, my first day of chapel. Dr. Mohler called for this to be "The Year of Living Dangerously." I was challenged to think, "What if my default is to go instead of stay?" As he pointed out, this is where in the history of the church (and as I reflected, in my life) that it is hardest to "let goods and kindred go."

This morning as I read in Pilgrim's Progress, I came across this passage which gets to the heart of Dr. Mohler's point and convicts me of laziness and the temptation to be comfortable:

From A Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan:

I beheld then, that they all went on till they came to the foot of the hill “Difficulty,” at the bottom of which was a spring. There was also in the same place two other ways besides that which came straight from the Gate; one turned to the left hand, and the other to the right, at the bottom of the Hill: but the narrow way lay right up the Hill (and the name of the going up the side of the Hill, is called Difficulty.) Christian now went to the spring and drank thereof to refresh himself (Isaiah 49:10), and then began to go up the Hill; saying,

This Hill, though high, I covet to ascend;
The difficulty will not me offend;
For I perceive the way to life lies here;
Come, pluck up, Heart; lets neither faint nor fear:
Better, though difficult, the right way to go,
Than wrong, though easy, where the end is woe.

The other two also came to the foot of the Hill. But when they saw that the Hill was steep and high, and that there was two other ways to go; and supposing also, that these two ways might meet again with that up which Christian went, on the other side of the Hill; therefore they were resolved to go in those ways (now the name of one of those ways was Danger, and the name of the other Destruction.) So the one took the way which is called Danger, which led him into a great Wood; and the other took directly up the way to Destruction, which led him into a wide field full of dark mountains, where he stumbled and fell, and rose no more.

"Better, though difficult, the right way to go,
Than wrong, though easy, where the end is woe."