Psalm 139:16
You saw who you created me to be before I became me!
Before I’d ever seen the light of day,
the number of days you planned for me
were already recorded in your book.
Today after breakfast I was sitting at the kitchen table, just relaxing and daydreaming before starting my day. Every few seconds a leaf would flutter gently to the ground. Some of the leaves were large, some small, some brightly colored, others more muted. I thought about how precious each was, how wondrously alive it had been just a few seconds earlier. I realized God saw each of them fall. Not just that, but he knew it would happen before it happened! God knows everything after all. Next, I wondered about the leaf itself as though it had the capacity for conscious thought. And I wondered, was the leaf clinging soooo tightly to the branch on which it lived its life only releasing its tenacious hold when it no longer had the strength to hang on?
Is that how we are as regards our earthly life? Are we clinging soooo tightly to that which holds us to this earth? Consider especially the weights, those things that hold us down emotionally and spiritually but for whatever reason we refuse to release.
And life itself. . . what of that?
Before I faced cancer, I would have said yes, I’m clinging to this earthly life with a choke-hold grip. I wasn’t afraid of death, but I was a bit afraid of the process of dying. Would it hurt? Would it be scary to be unable to draw a breath sufficient to maintain life?
No longer. I gave my book the title Fearless in Euroclydon for a reason
At the beginning of 2017, my first full year without Rod, I believe God gave me the idea of falling up. Of course, since then I see He’s given several others the same idea. Or maybe I’d seen it in someone else’s writing to start with. I choose to believe he gave it to me, and somehow the others copied me!
In my journal for 2017 (the one I lost last year—I hope someone is enjoying my weird musings!), at the front, I drew a picture of a large tree losing its leaves, but they were falling up! Toward the heavens.
And I realized that’s what God wants each of us to do. When we let go of the weak (because that’s what it actually is!) hold we have on our life here—its dreams and nightmares, blessings and curses, loves and fears, all fleeting in nature—we have nowhere to fall but up. Into his arms.
Into the dreams, blessings, and love that He gives.
Into the eternal. . .
The verse with which I started this post was taken from The Passion Translation of the Bible which is poetically written and quite beautiful. I had to literally fight my typing fingers not to replace the word “were” in the last line with the grammatically correct “was” since the subject of the sentence is the singular “number”.
JLM in Euroclydon 