and lead me in a level path

Definitely its own Sunday, this idea. Clearly related to rising, and it's a good idea, so maybe its the kickoff. Here's where the stairs come in: your whole life, everyone's whole life is a struggle to climb to the top of a four-step staircase. Four steps doesn't seem like a lot, but the difference between story one and two is an eternity.

I/You/We start at the bottom step. You begin your life and spend most of your life living in this pit of sin. If all you know to do is live within that pit, you think you're doing all right with yourself. Thing is, you're in a pit, man. Looking up is when you see Him, hand out, asking you if you'd like help out of that pit. Take His hand. Take His hand. Because if you do, that's step one.

Once you're out of that pit, you're ready for step two. Crawling out of that pit, even with an extra helping hand, is tiring. You're exhausted, spent, and often face-first on the ground. Looking down, you see the effort of your struggle out of the pit has stained your robes, has stained you and you again find yourself looking up. Only this time, the helping hand reaching out to you is nailed to a cross. But take His hand, because this is the only way past the second step, friend.

Now that you find yourself clinging to the cross, above the ground, above the pit, clinging CLINGING to that tree, you find yourself looking for that next step up. Step three already finds you in a place from which you cannot slip, a place from which you're already above where you deserve, but it's still not where He needs you. And looking up, again, you peer into the Heavens and there He is still above you, and there's that hand. And if you take that hand, that ever-reaching hand, you can proceed even further. There He is reigning in Heaven, waiting for you to see and live beyond the whole clinging. You don't reach Him yet at step three, but being that close with the snapping trembles, you know you're not that far at all.

You won't reach the fourth step here, brother (sister). That fourth step is pretty much taken for you. At your end, you'll take that fourth step and find yourself looking up still; there He is, enthroned. Waiting for you to take His hand one more time. He's got somewhere for you to go, where there is no looking up; arisen you are.