When I spent a blissful few days in Paris visiting my oldest progeny, I scoured the Louvre top to bottom, cranny to roof, wing to wing. I was a tourist obsessed. It wasn’t my first trip to the Louvre, but I just keep appreciating its treasures and structure more and more over time. I took many a picture of all the things you’re supposed to and even more pictures of things that touched me and fascinated me deeply. Like doorknobs. Like hinges. Like window panes and tile.
Like the staircase in the photo above.
That staircase.
A spiral that was used by the servants to access the massive formal banquet hall of the palace and several of the more public, fantastical rooms that played stage to the royalty of France. The staircase wasn’t designed to create dramatic entrance. It wasn’t a sweeping set of steps, focused to usher audience to the king.
It was serviceable. It was oddly situated in a long hallway, bisected floor to ceiling.
It was mesmerizing.
The curves.
The plaster finish on the underside.
The visual impression that the staircase twisted into an unseen chamber, a mystery.
Seemed a lot like life.
It’s easier to take a step toward a destination you can see. It’s easier to climb a sweep of stairs that are clearly taking you closer to chambers where banquets and audiences with impressive people are held. It’s easier to take a step when the next step rises predictably in cadence and the climb is straightforward, obvious, navigable.
But just as our very building blocks, our DNA strands, are twisting, spiral staircases, so are our steps of faith. The faith to pour creativity and heart into a project that can only be taken a twirling step at a time. The faith to fall in love, not knowing if your heart will weather the climb intact. The faith to take a step because of a subtle whisper of the Father saying, ‘Trust Me.’
Faith to take a step.
One at a time.
