Climb

Reading the parable of the prodigal son this morning, Luke 15:11-32, I was struck by something that had not previously occurred to me – the pace.  We of course don’t know how much chronological time passed from when the younger son to take his “journey into a far country” to when he “wasted his substance on riotous living,” went into the fields to “feed swine,” and ultimately “began to be in want,” but it takes only four verses of the story.  It seemed pretty quick.  I imagine that to the son, the road to the “far country” seemed a damned sight shorter than the road back to his father and brother – though of course the distance was the same.  It occurs to me that this is reality.  The fall is always quicker/easier than the climb back up.  Still, we climb.