It was a crisp early autumn morning. The church custodian had already set a tall ladder against the wall, preparing to wash the church windows. This yearly cleaning of all the windows was by no means an easy task. The lower panes were simple enough to reach, but climbing up to clean the second-story windows from outside with only a ladder was always a dangerous undertaking.

Usually, I paid little attention to his work, as though it were something ordinary. But on this day, I felt a quiet worry rising within me. Nearing his retirement, he now seemed frailer than before, sometimes even gasping for breath when the work became too much. Yet with his usual cheerful and bright demeanor, he was ready to climb the ladder.

“Al, please be careful!”

I pressed my hands together in prayer, my face filled with concern, urging him to stay safe.

“Don’t worry,” he replied with a radiant smile. “This is my seventeenth year doing this. The Lord who protected me through the first sixteen will surely protect me again today.”

Step by careful step, he climbed, while the old wooden ladder creaked and groaned under his weight, as if resisting.

“The higher I go, the less frightening it feels,” he said calmly. “When I’m below, my thoughts make me afraid. But once I climb, I entrust everything into the Lord’s hands.”

With steady caution, he reached out his hands and began to wipe away the dust of the world from the stained glass.

The sight reminded me of my childhood. I recalled watching my father climb high on a ladder to repair the thatched roof of our home. It seemed as if the white clouds might brush his hair at any moment. While he stepped away briefly, I waited eagerly, planning to climb the ladder myself. When he returned, he found me standing below, gazing up, and sternly warned me never to climb it. But curiosity overcame me. Once he was out of sight, I quickly placed my foot on the ladder.

I thought that if I could just reach the top, I would be able to touch the drooping willow branches and the drifting clouds. But suddenly, my rubber shoes slipped, and in an instant the ladder and I crashed down together. The feeling was one of utter despair, of being cut off from everything. My parents and neighbors rushed over in alarm, while I wept bitterly. Yet it was not my bleeding knee that pained me most—it was the knowledge that I might never climb that ladder again.

As I grew older, that unfulfilled longing often returned to me in dreams. The ladder I could not reach left behind an invisible wound in my heart. Even now, I sometimes dream of climbing again—this time with patience, steadiness, and care—to touch the willow’s dancing hands and the soft white clouds.

Today, too, we climb the uncertain ladders of life. But how earnestly, how faithfully, do we climb? Even with dreams and fervent desires, if we rush forward in haste—our feet in sweaty rubber shoes—we may end in a fall from which there is no return. With the freedom of choice God grants us, we must examine with eyes of faith whether we ascend with certainty and our very best effort. For a result without process is vain, and a tomorrow that ignores today is like grasping at the wind. Even if tomorrow we seize the clouds and cling to the willow, today let us climb barefoot.

That morning, the church windows reflected the blue autumn sky as sunlight danced upon them. Al had once again finished his seventeenth year of cleaning them without harm. Yet what filled me with the greatest joy was not merely his safe return to earth, but the way his life itself—full of confidence, joy, and faith—climbed ever higher, rung by rung, on the ladder toward eternity.