By Tim Smith

David Powlison, a writer on spiritual formation, is perhaps best known for the metaphor “ladders to nowhere”:

“In our pride, in our haughtiness, in our going after matters too great, it’s as though we set up in our lives ladders to nowhere. They’re like ladders against blank walls. They don’t actually go to a floor. They have no endpoint. The only thing you can do is fall off them. And people live their whole lives climbing these ladders to nowhere and falling off ... We keep building ladders to nowhere ... but they don’t actually end up leading us to life. In fact, they mis-define life. They attempt to define value and stigma, success and shame, good and evil, desirable and abhorrent, but they do so in a way that has no value at the end of the day. The obvious ones tend to be where we get stuck. We judge life by the neighborhood we live in, how healthy we are, what a good athlete we are, how big our church is, how successful our career is, what our kids look like, and whether they’re better than somebody else’s kids. These are all ladders to nowhere. We rank ourselves based on these things, but they take us nowhere.” (“Dissecting the Heart,” 176)

You know what our greatest fear should be? Not failing to reach the top, but reaching the top only to discover the ladder was leaning against nothing. Call it a broken cistern. Call it a ladder to nowhere. Call it meaningless.

At the end of his life, Solomon realized he had been on a ladder to nowhere. As he reflected, he put it this way: “Meaningless! Meaningless! ... Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun?” (Ecclesiastes 1:2-3). He goes on to share that the pursuit of knowledge is meaningless, as is wisdom. The pursuit of pleasure is meaningless, and even the pursuit of work itself is meaningless. He had spent his entire life chasing after these things, climbing the ladders of each, only to discover the pursuit was meaningless. A ladder leading to nowhere...

Jesus called it gaining the whole world and forfeiting your soul (Mark 8:36). Different metaphors. Same miserable exchange.

May we ask God to NOT let us climb toward things that cannot give life, but rather to teach us to pursue the things that matter in eternity. To find our satisfaction in Christ, our identity in His righteousness, our joy in His presence, our meaning in doing His will. May we stop measuring our life by how high we climb and start measuring it by how faithfully we follow and how obediently we serve.

Check your ladder and make a commitment to avoid climbing ladders to nowhere. Instead, may we spend our lives following the One who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

Better to be found at the feet of Jesus than at the top of a ladder leaning against nothing.