The “Healing Hill”

Growing up on “The Hill” had such a profound effect upon my life.

The older I get, the more I came to appreciate the rural farm environment.

I left it for a season, but the city life held no real significance for me; so after

Josh was born, my return to the homeplace seemed a necessity.  In more ways

than one, my roots were connected to “The Hill”.

The stability, the consistency, the safety of Family had been implanted from my

early years, and to this day I find their effects still reign.

I guess that’s why when life ceased to be in that content through the death of Daddy,

then Mama, I was like at the greatest loss I’d ever experienced.

It seems there is no true step five in my grief process…acceptance. Grief is not a friend, but it is a constant companion.

Having made the statement “I guess I will die on the hill”, when my reason for living

on it was gone it seemed irrelevant to live on the hill any longer.

Thus, began a new journey, a new adventure, a new chapter to my story of life.

My memory bank is my solace on many occasions.  Especially now, it’s not surprising,

on any given night when it’s just Buddy, my devoted Shih tzu, and me, my mind begins

to sort through various scenarios which bring to my heart the warm feelings of family love.

Unlike this age in which we are living now, the stability of parents was paramount in my bygone days.

Mama was always at home, taking care of my Grandmas, Daddy and me. We had three meals a day, breakfast at 7a., dinner at 12 noon, and supper at 6p. It never wavered.

Daddy was a hard working man.  He had his faults, but he was a good provider and even

though he wasn’t an educated man, he had educated himself and had more common sense

than lots of college degree men.

Our roots ran deep, for which I appreciate more as I grew older.

Yes, the good ole days were good ole days.  At the time, they just seemed like life.  But as I age, I find myself referring to those days of life as the good ole days.

In late 2008, I awoke in the middle of a night with a title and story in my head.

From that beginning, a novel was birthed.

Although I was no longer living on “The Hill”, as the story line progressed, a place called

“The Hill” came into being.

Now, it’s not related to the hill I had lived on for years, but the name struck a sensitive chord, so I used the name in the story for old time’s sake.

Hopefully before year end, this novel will become a reality. And I trust it will touch hearts who read it. For sure, there will be situations which will have relevance to various life encounters, and the reader might find a common thread in it to their lives. It’s fiction, but it’s based on experiences which are very common to everyday man. I get amazed when I read it, wondering where so much of it actually derived. I had not read a novel during the writing period since high school. Therefore, it’s original, God directed its birth.

As life has continued to unfold, now sixty-five years finds me once again in a place which Josh so aptly has christened “The Hill” by Cherokee Lake.

The meaning of names is a thread which runs through my novel, and just for your information, “The Hill” means a place of prominence.

For the average American, when the term “The Hill” is used, the first place to come to mind, no doubt, is our nation’s Capitol.

For me, “The Hill” was 1944 Dublin-Eastman Rd., Dexter, Georgia, 31019.

But, for the Christian, “The Hill”, is Golgotha/Calvary, where Jesus carried a cross, and died willingly on that cross so that whosoever would believe on Him would not perish, but would have eternal life.

That’s the “Healing Hill”. Its relevance is still vital today, over two thousand years later.

In an age of unbelief that surpasses anything I’ve ever seen in my sixty-five years, the “Healing Hill” is still healing broken hearts and shattered lives.

No matter how far one has wandered, no matter how deep in sin one has allowed himself to stoop, no matter how rebellious one has chosen to live, no matter how debased one has allowed himself to go, the “Healing Hill” still has the power to transform the life which will humbly bow at the foot of the old rugged cross and confess his need of a Savior.

Yes, no doubt I will die on “The Hill”, and even though it’s not the same hill the statement originally referenced, my true solace is the fact that I once visited the “Healing Hill”, as a twenty-one year old, morally good but sinfully lost, and confessed that I was a needy person, who was walking in darkness and desperately needed the light.

Jesus had knocked on my heart’s door, and thankfully because of the old fashioned, holiness preacher uncle and aunts who had displayed the reality of a personal relationship with the God of Heaven, I believed in my heart that His love was the true love which I so needed. I knelt in an altar and cried out to Jesus, and He came into my heart. My life has not been the same since.

His Word became a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path, the fear of the Lord became my beginning of wisdom, and no matter where I went, or what I did, His presence never left me. There’s always consequences when we willfully sin, but His unconditional loves never stops wooing the heart that follows hard after God.

The “Healing Hill” is still the remedy for whatever ails the heart of man today.

No matter how holy or righteous we claim to be, no matter how much we abstain from the outward sins of the world, the inward man is in a daily warfare with the greatest sin of all, and actually the father of all sins—PRIDE.

So, it behooves us all, individually, to visit the “Healing Hill” daily…let the crimson flow wash away whatever we have to contend with.

If you don’t have a place called “The Hill” in your story of life, I trust you do have a connection with the “Healing Hill”.

Whether it’s spiritual, physical, or emotional needs, there’s solace at the “Healing Hill”, and for a surety life will never be the same!

D. S. Mullis

.2017