Weekend Words

From Water My Soul...

 Life's Crossroads 

Read Isaiah 40:18-25; Hebrews 13:7-17

Artwork by Sarah Addison Allen

Our property terminates at the edge of a mountain.  It really seems to be the end of civilization.  But if you wade through the underbrush and angle down off the mountain, you come to a road and buildings in a surprisingly short time.

What marks the end of our property is the start of someone else's land.  What we see as the conclusion, someone else sees as the beginning.  The difference is simply in how we view it.

Sometimes we encounter days that seem like endings: God has placed a period where we'd like a comma to be.  But just as often, what we view as the end is really a beginning after all.

It's like a large pink ball my children once played with.  Greenish-gold lines circle it, wrapping it all the way around, and there was really no way to tell where a line began or ended.  There was only perspective.  The part we looked at could seem to be the end of that particular line.  Or the beginning. 

God has no beginning or ending, for he has always been and always will be. "It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth" (Isaiah 40:22).  He can see both the dawn and the sunset of our lives.

But since we can't, we frequently come to places that look like the end.  The end of hopes, goals, and fondly cherished dreams.  We lose loved ones, homes, jobs, possessions.  Life screeches to a halt and revolves around loss.  This is the end, we decide.

But then life tilts to a new start, in the same way a ball rolls, and the circle shifts.  We wade through the underbrush of grief that clogs our personal mountain and find another road and buildings, a different set of goals and dreams.  Closer to us than we would have believed.

If we walk with God on the road called life, the bends won't seem quite as alarming because we can trust that he knows what's on the other side.  The places that appear to be dead ends don't have to seem so bleak because he already knows what the new beginning will be.

If we're trusting God instead of our own resources, we can say with certainty, "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever" (Hebrews 13:8), and we can know he is beside us, unchanging.  

It takes faith to see an end as a new beginning instead.  But nothing is too hard for God, and he sees the entire circle that's our life.  He has designed the bends too.  He knows which new beginnings will cause us to walk towards him and heaven's dawn.

Artwork by Rebecca Dewey

Prayer: Lord, it's comforting to believe that you are watching over the endings and the beginnings of my life.  May each new start find me closer to you.